GIFT  ©F 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 


LINCOLN 


rontispiece 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 


BY 

DUNCAN  C.  MILNER 


THE  NEALE  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

440  FOURTH  AVENUE,   NEW  YORK 
M  C  M  X  X 


v 


COPYRIGHT,  1920,  BY 
THE  NEAI.E  PUBLISHING   COMPANY 


IN   LOVING  MEMORY  OF 
L.   R.   M. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

FOREWORD 9 

CHAPTER 

I    DRINK  IN  PIONEER  DAYS 13 

II    LINCOLN  AS  A  SUFFERER  FROM  DRINK       ...  27 

III  LINCOLN  AS  AN  ABSTAINER    ....           .      .  45 

IV  LINCOLN  AS  A  TEMPERANCE  REFORMER      ...  61 
V    LINCOLN  AND  PROHIBITION 73 

VI    LINCOLN'S  GREAT  TEMPERANCE  SPEECH     ...  87 

VII    THE  PRESIDENTS  AND  LIQUOR 103 

VIII    LINCOLN:  AMERICA'S  GREAT-HEART       .     .      .      .  125 

APPENDIX 139 

LIST  OF  BOOKS  QUOTED .  153 


FOREWORD 

At  the  opening  of  the  nineteenth  century  Napoleon 
Bonaparte  was  the  commanding  figure  of  the  world. 
The  hero  of  the  new  century  is  Abraham  Lincoln. 
While  identified  with  the  Civil  War  as  commander- 
in-chief  of  the  victorious  armies,  no  man  ever  suf 
fered  more  than  he  on  account  of  that  terrible  con 
flict.  In  vivid  contrast  with  the  famed  Corsican,  he 
was  ever  in  great-hearted,  tender  sympathy  with  hu 
man  suffering  and  misfortune.  He  lacked  utterly  that 
traditional  ambition  of  other  rulers  of  men  which 
gratifies  self-seeking  interests  even  at  the  cost  of  suf 
fering  and  death  to  their  fellow-men. 

Lincoln's  soul  revolted  at  war,  yet  he  realized  that, 
as  things  were,  war  must  be;  and  he  it  was  who,  in 
the  face  of  cries  for  peace  at  any  price,  said :  "With 
malice  toward  none,  with  charity  for  all,  with  firm 
ness  in  the  right,  as  God  gives  us  to  see  the  right,  let 
us  strive  on  to  finish  the  work  we  are  in."  1 

It  was  to  be  expected  that  men  would  try  to  conjure 
with  the  great  name  of  Lincoln.  He  has  been  claimed 
as  a  follower  even  by  atheists  and  spiritualists.  Those 
who  favor  liquor-drinking  and  liquor-selling  have 
made  special  efforts  to  identify  him  with  their  cause. 
Many  volumes  have  been  published  treating  of  Lin- 
Second  Inaugural  Address. 

9 


i.o  FOREWORD 

coin's  religious  faith  and  his  relation  to  slavery.  When 
we  think  of  the  great  controversies  on  the  subjects  of 
intemperance  and  slavery  we  cannot  but  realize  that 
Lincoln  must  have  had  vital  relations  with  both  sub 
jects.  It  will  surely,  therefore,  be  not  only  reasonable 
but  profitable  as  well  to  publish  all  the  facts  as  to  his 
relations  to  the  temperance  reform. 

Wine  and  strong  drink  have  a  large  place  in  the  lit 
erature  of  many  nations.  College  students  find 
praises  of  wine  abounding  in  their  classical  studies, 
and  many  college  songs  have  a  decided  bacchanalian 
flavor.  Poets,  from  Horace  to  Robert  Burns,  have 
glorified  wine  and  liquor-drinking.  For  ages  men  ac 
cepted  the  dominance  of  drink  and  the  facts  of  drunk 
enness  as  necessities  of  human  nature.  Dickens'  pic 
tures  of  the  drink  debauchery  in  the  England  of  his 
day  are  paralleled  in  the  customs  and  conditions  sur 
rounding  the  Great  Emancipator.2  The  marvel  about 

2  Dickens  was  a  contemporary  of  Lincoln.  In  coming  days, 
when  drink  will  be  banished  from  the  daily  life  of  respectable 
people  and  when  a  drunkard  will  be  a  curiosity,  it  will  be  diffi 
cult  for  readers  of  Dickens  to  understand  his  persistent  refer 
ences  to  the  use  of  all  kinds  of  liquors.  While  he  gives  harrow 
ing  pictures  of  poverty  and  suffering  caused  by  drink,  and  some 
of  his  drunkards  are  disgusting  and  horrible,  it  must  be  said 
that  his  celebration  of  social  drinking  has  a  tendency  to  make 
attractive  the  use  of  intoxicants. 

G.  K.  Chesterton,  in  his  critical  study  of  Dickens,  resents  the 
criticism  by  temperance  reformers  "of  the  Bacchic  element  in 
the  books  of  Dickens,"  but  admits  that  the  great  novelist  "did  de 
fend  drink  clamorously,  praised  it  with  passion,  and  de 
scribed  whole  orgies  of  it  with  enormous  gusto."  And  he  adds : 
"Yet  it  is  wonderfully  typical  of  his  prompt  and  impatient  na 
ture  that  he  himself  drank  comparatively  little."  He  also  de 
clares  that  Dickens  praised  wine-drinking  "because  it  was  a  great 
human  institution — one  of  the  rites  of  civilization."  This  "glit- 


FOREWORD  ii 

Lincoln  is  that  in  the  midst  of  almost  universal  drink 
ing  he  not  only  grew  up  entirely  free  from  the  habit 
but,  from  his  early  youth,  was  consistently  antagonis 
tic  to  drink. 

Total  abstinence  and  prohibition  had  small  place  in 
the  thoughts  of  the  people  of  Lincoln's  day.  There 
was  general  acceptance  of  the  idea,  however,  that  al 
coholic  liquors  were  a  necessity.  In  everyday  life 
they  were  a  part  of  hospitality  and  supposed  good 
cheer;  in  sickness  they  were  regarded  as  sovereign 
remedies.  Alcoholic  liquor  was  called  aqua  vita,  the 
water  of  life. 

Since  this  book  was  prepared  for  the  press  there 
has  been  published  a  most  interesting  book  by  Dr. 
Ervin  Chapman,  entitled  "Latest  Light  on  Abraham 
Lincoln,"  which  contains  the  most  extended  account 
hitherto  published  on  "Lincoln  and  Temperance." 

My  dear  friend,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Edward  C.  Ray,  of 
Santa  Barbara,  Cal.,  read  my  early  notes  on  the  sub 
ject  of  this  book,  and  urged  its  completion  and  pub 
lication. 

Judge  Robert  McMurdy,  of  Chicago,  the  eminent 

taring  generality,"  however,  makes  a  poor  apology  for  the  hor 
rors  of  the  drink  traffic  and  the  brutality  of  the  alcohol  habit 
so  conspicuous  in  England. 

In  Dickens'  time  there  was  little  social  consciousness  of  the 
drink  evil.  One  can  but  think  that  if  he  could  have  had  the  mod 
ern  knowledge  obtained  from  scientific  discovery  and  experi 
ment,  and  the  results  of  social  and  economic  study  as  to  the 
liquor  scourge,  he  might  have  written  the  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin" 
of  the  temperance  reform,  and  added  to  his  crown  the  glories 
of  another  revolution  in  the  uplift  of  human  society.  Because 
the  world  is  awakening  from  its  alcoholic  stupor,  we  now  seem 
to  be  approaching  the  end  of  the  temperance  controversy. 


12  FOREWORD 

lawyer  and  devoted  friend  of  philanthropy,  aided  me 
with  many  suggestions. 

The  late  Jenkin  Lloyd  Jones, — the  founder  of  Abra 
ham  Lincoln  Centre  of  Chicago, — the  man  who  led 
in  the  discovery  of  Lincoln's  birthplace,  who  was  in 
strumental  in  its  rescue  from  pollution  as  the  site  of  a 
distillery,  and  whose  "love  for  and  veneration  of  the 
martyr-president"  was  said  "by  a  friend"  to  be  "the 
consuming  passion  of  Mr.  Jones'  life," — urged  the 
publication  of  the  book,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  not 
simply  a  temperance  document  but  an  addition  to  the 
Lincoln  literature. 

THE  AUTHOR. 


LINCOLN   AND  LIQUOR 


CHAPTER  I 

DRINK  IN   PIONEER  DAYS 

During  the  childhood  and  youth  of  Abraham  Lin 
coln  liquor-drinking  was  almost  universal,  and  that 
period  in  American  history  has  been  described  as  one 
of  sad  debauchery.  Robert  Ellis  Thompson  writes: 

At  the  opening  of  the  century  it  really  seemed  as  if 
the  manhood  of  America  was  about  to  be  drowned  in 
strong  drink.  The  cheapness  of  untaxed  intoxicants — 
rum,  whiskey,  and  apple-jack,  made  by  any  one  who  chose 
to  undertake  the  business  and  sold  at  every  gathering  of 
the  people  without  reference  to  the  age  or  sex  of  the 
purchaser — had  made  drunkenness  almost  universal. 
Samuel  Brech,  writing  at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  cen 
tury,  says  that  "it  was  impossible  to  secure  a  servant- 
white  or  black,  bond  or  free — who  could  be  depended  on 
to  keep  sober  for  twenty-four  hours.  All  classes  and 
professions  were  affected.  The  judge  was  overcome  on 
the  bench ;  the  minister  sometimes  staggered  on  his  way 
to  the  pulpit.  When  a  church  had  to  be  built,  the  cost 
of  the  rum  needed  would  be  greater  than  that  of  the 
lumber  or  the  labor  employed.  When  an  ecclesiastical 

13 


14  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

convention  of  any  kind  was  to  be  entertained  it  was 
question  how  much  strong  drink  would  be  required  fo 
the  reverend  members."  1 

In  "A  History  of  American  Christianity,"  we  at 
told  that  "the  long  struggle  of  the  American  Churc 
against  drunkenness  as  a  social  and  public  evil  bega 
at  an  early  date,"  but  while  there  were  indications  o 
a  public  sentiment  against  the  evils  of  drink,  it  "di 
not  prevent  the  dismal  fact  of  a  wide  prevalence  o 
drunkenness  as  one  of  the  distinguishing  characters 
tics  of  American  society  at  the  opening  of  the  nine 
teenth  century.  .  .  .  Seven  years  of  army  life  wit 
its  exhaustion  and  exposure  and  military  social  usag 
had  initiated  into  dangerous  drinking  habits  many  c 
the  most  justly  influential  leaders  of  society,  and  trj 
example  of  these  had  set  the  tone  for  all  ranks.  .  . 
Gradually  and  unobserved  the  nation  had  settled  dow 
into  a  slough  of  drunkenness  of  which  it  is  difficu 
for  us  at  this  date  to  form  a  clear  conception.  In  tri 
prevalence  of  intemperate  drinking  habits  the  clerg 
had  not  escaped  the  general  infection.  The  priest  an 
the  prophet  had  gone  astray  through  strong  drink." 
Weddings  were,  as  a  rule,  drinking  frolics.  Chris 
mas,  New  Year's  day,  and  other  holidays  were  thru 
of  excessive  drinking  and  drunkenness.  College  con 
mencements  and  other  functions,  and  even  minister 
ordinations  and  installations,  were  not  considered  con 
plete  without  a  supply  of  liquors. 

1  Thompson,  "The  Hand  of  God  in  American  History,"  p.  n 

2  Bacon.     "A  History  of  American  Christianity,"  p.  285. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  15 

The  Rev.  Lyman  Beecher  thus  describes  the  ordi 
nation  of  a  minister  at  Plymouth,  Connecticut,  in 
1810: 

At  this  ordination  the  preparation  for  our  creature 
comforts  besides  food  included  a  broad  sideboard  cov 
ered  with  decanters  and  bottles,  and  sugar  and  pitchers 
of  water.  There  we  found  all  kinds  of  liquors  then  in 
vogue.  The  drinking  was  apparently  universal.  This 
preparation  was  made  by  the  society  as  a  matter  of 
course.  When  the  consociation  arrived,  they  always  took 
something  to  drink  around,  also  before  public  services, 
and  always  on  their  return.  As  they  could  not  all  drink 
at  once,  they  were  obliged  to  stand  and  wait  as  people  do 
when  they  go  to  mill.  When  they  had  all  done  drinking 
and  taken  to  pipes  and  tobacco,  in  less  than  fifteen  min 
utes  there  was  such  a  smoke  you  could  not  see.  The 
noise  I  cannot  describe.  It  was  the  maximum  of  hilar 
ity.  They  told  their  stories  and  were  at  the  height  of 
jocose  talk.3 

This  describes  happenings,  not  on  the  rough  and 
wild  frontier,  but  at  a  most  solemn  religious  meeting 
in  staid  and  cultured  New  England.  At  a  noted  col 
lege  in  Virginia,  when  the  corner  stone  of  a  new 
building  was  laid,  one  of  the  trustees  generously  pro 
vided  a  barrel  of  whiskey  for  the  occasion.  The  head 
of  the  barrel  was  removed,  clippers  were  provided,  and 
everybody  was  urged  to  partake. 

A  noted  Harvard  professor,  picturing  the  scenes  at 
commencement  in  those  early  days,  writes : 

3  Lyman   Beecher,   "Autobiography." 


16  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

The  entire  common,  then  an  unenclosed  dust  plain, 
was  completely  covered  on  Commencement  day,  and  the 
night  preceding  and  following  it,  with  drinking-stands, 
dancing-booths,  mountebank  shows  and  gambling-tables ; 
and  I  have  never  heard  such  a  horrid  din,  tumult,  and 
jargon  of  oath,  shout,  scream,  fiddle,  quarreling,  and 
drunkenness  as  on  those  two  nights. 


Col.  T.  W.  Higginson,  in  his  "Recollections,"  says : 

I  can  remember  when  the  senior  class  assembled  an 
nually  around  Liberty  Tree  on  Class  Day  and  ladled  out 
bowls  of  punch  for  every  passer-by,  till  every  Cambridge 
boy  saw  a  dozen  men  in  various  stages  of  inebriation 
about  the  village  yard. 

Similar  stories  are  told  of  Yale,  Dartmouth,  and 
other  colleges.  There  was  a  common  maxim  in  those 
clays  that  no  man  could  be  found  in  one  of  the  colleges 
who  had  not  been  drunk  at  least  once  in  his  life. 

The  Rev.  John  Chambers,  for  over  fifty  years  a 
Presbyterian  minister  in  Philadelphia,  became  promi 
nent  as  an  advocate  of  temperance.  Much  disturbed 
by  the  common  custom  of  serving  liquor  at  funerals, 
he  gave  notice  from  his  pulpit  that  he  would  enter  no 
house  where  liquors  were  supplied.  On  one  occa 
sion,  coming  to  the  door  of  the  house  where  he  was  to 
officiate  and  seeing  glasses  and  decanters  on  the  table, 
he  refused  to  enter.  Though  a  heavy  rain  was  falling, 
when  he  was  invited  in  out  of  the  wet,  his  reply  was: 
"No!  I'll  drown  first."  He  compromised  far  enough 
to  hold  a  service  at  the  door,  while  an  elder  held  an 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  17 

umbrella  over  him.  This  action  on  the  part  of  the 
minister  made  a  great  sensation,  and  an  elder  and 
some  members  withdrew  from  his  church.4 

In  1833  Dr.  George  B.  Cheever,  a  minister  in  Salem, 
Massachusetts,  published  a  pamphlet  entitled  "Deacon 
Giles'  Distillery."  In  the  form  of  allegory,  Deacon 
Giles  was  pictured  as  running  a  distillery  and  also  as 
having  a  room  in  his  liquor  factory  where  Bibles  were 
sold.  In  a  dream  imps  entered  by  night  and  painted 
signs  on  the  casks  which  became  visible  when  they 
were  tapped  for  retail  sale.  The  inscriptions  were 
of  this  style : 

"Who  hath  woe?  Inquire  at  Deacon  Giles'  Dis 
tillery." 

"Who  hath  Delirium  Tremens? — Insanity  and  Mur 
der?  Inquire  at  Deacon  Giles'  Distillery." 

At  that  time  there  were  four  distilleries  in  full  blast 
in  Salem,  and  one  of  them  was  run  by  a  deacon  who 
also  sold  Bibles  in  his  distillery.  A  relative  of  his 
had  been  drowned  in  a  whiskey  vat,  and  he  had  a 
drunken  son;  and  these  incidents  were  also  pictured 
in  the  dream.  The  deacon  who  owned  this  distillery 
sued  the  young  minister  for  libel;  and  although  de 
fended  by  Rufus  Choate,  he  was  sentenced  to  pay  a 
fine  and  to  thirty  clays'  imprisonment.  The  women  of 
Salem  sympathized  with  Cheever,  furnished  his  cell 
with  comfortable  furniture,  and  saw  that  he  did  not 
lack  good  things  to  eat.  As  might  have  been  expected, 
the  affair  excited  great  attention,  and  the  pamphlets 
had  a  tremendous  sale.  Dr.  Cheever  had  as  successor 
*Griffis,  "John  Chambers,"  p.  51. 


i8  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

to  his  first  pamphlet  another  entitled  "Deacon  Jones' 
Brewery;  or  Distiller  turned  Brewer."  In  this  imps 
were  pictured  as  dancing  around  the  brewery  caldrons, 
casting  in  noxious  and  poisonous  drugs.  There  were 
no  further  prosecutions,  but  the  two  "dreams"  proved 
to  be  powerful  documents  in  behalf  of  the  rising  tem 
perance  reform. 

Slavery  and  intemperance  were  at  that  time  recog 
nized  as  twin  evils,  and  the  two  reforms  that  aimed 
at  their  destruction  were  in  many  cases  antagonized 
by  the  same  advocates.  Bishop  Hopkins  of  Vermont, 
who  became  noted  as  an  apologist  for  slavery  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  Bible,  published  a  book  with  the 
title,  "The  Triumph  of  Temperance  is  the  Triumph 
of  Infidelity."  He  declared  that  the  wines  of  the 
Bible  were  all  intoxicating  liquors,  and  that  the  tem 
perance  reformers,  when  urging  total  abstinence,  were 
doing  the  work  of  infidels. 

Rev.  Dr.  J.  M.  Sturtevant,  in  a  private  letter,  tells 
of  visiting  and  worshiping  in  an  old  church  at  Tal- 
maclge,  Ohio,  where  he  "was  shown  the  wooden  ves 
sel  which  had  held  the  gallon  of  whiskey  given  as  a 
prize  for  the  first  stick  of  timber  brought  to  the  spot 
for  its  construction." 

Farmers  were  compelled  to  supply  liquor  to  their 
helpers,  and  men  thought  that,  without  liquor,  they 
could  not  endure  the  toil  of  harvest  or  thrashing.  It 
was  the  common  belief  that  men  engaged  in  any  form 
of  hard  labor  needed  alcoholic  liquors,  and  they  de 
manded  as  a  right  that  employers  should  furnish  regu 
lar  supplies.  Mothers  and  babes  were  given  liquor, 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  19 

and  it  was  thought  of  such  value  that  good  people  said 
they  could  not  sleep  at  night  without  assurance  that 
there  was  liquor  in  the  house. 

While  these  ideas  prevailed  in  the  older  portions  of 
the  country,  the  superstitious  belief  in  the  need  and 
value  of  alcoholic  liquors  was  even  more  prevalent 
in  frontier  life.  In  the  pioneer  days  of  Kentucky,  In 
diana,  and  Illinois  the  market  for  the  crops  was  lim 
ited,  and  there  was  a  lack  of  transportation.  There 
were  many  small  neighborhood  distilleries.  Corn  was 
made  into  whiskey  because  that  was  easily  trans 
ported,  and  it  was  even  used  in  the  payment  of  debts. 
Indeed,  when  Lincoln's  father  decided  to  leave  Ken 
tucky,  he  sold  his  farm  and  took  part  of  the  payment 
in  whiskey. 

The  liquor  saloon,  as  it  now  exists,  with  every  de 
vice  for  the  encouragement  of  drinking,  was,  how 
ever,  at  that  time  utterly  unknown.  In  the  barroom 
of  taverns  were  small  cupboards  under  lock  and  key, 
from  which  whiskey,  brandy,  and  rum  were  sold. 
Whiskey  was  sold  in  stores  just  as  molasses  and  sim 
ilar  commodities  were  sold. 

Although  Lincoln  was  born  and  grew  to  manhood 
in  the  midst  of  such  conditions,  and  in  an  age  when 
such  were  the  popular  ideas  in  regard  to  drink,  he 
never  drank,  but  was  a  lifelong  total  abstainer.  When 
a  very  young  man  he  was  so  impressed  with  the  evils 
of  drink  that  he  wrote  an  essay  on  temperance, — an 
essay  that  made  such  an  impression  on  the  community 
that  a  minister  asked  for  a  copy  and  had  it  printed  in 
an  Ohio  newspaper.  It  is  possible  that  this  paper  may 


20  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

yet  be  found.5  In  his  mature  life,  in  a  very  noted  ad 
dress, — hereinafter  referred  to  more  fully, — Lincoln 
spoke  of  the  almost  universal  use  of  liquor  and  said: 

When  all  such  of  us  as  have  now  reached  the  years  of 
maturity  first  opened  our  eyes  upon  the  stage  of  exist 
ence,  we  found  intoxicating  liquor  recognized  by  every 
body,  used  by  everybody,  repudiated  by  nobody.  It  com 
monly  entered  into  the  first  draught  of  the  infant  and 
the  last  draught  of  the  dying  man.  From  the  sideboard 
of  the  parson  down  to  the  ragged  pocket  of  the  house 
less  loafer,  it  was  constantly  found.  Physicians  pre 
scribed  it  in  this,  that,  and  the  other  disease ;  government 
provided  it  for  soldiers ;  and  to  have  a  rolling  or  raising, 
a  husking  or  hoedown  anywhere  about,  without  it,  was 
positively  unsufferable.  So,  too,  it  was  everywhere  a  re 
spectable  article  of  manufacture  and  of  merchandise. 
The  making  of  it  was  regarded  as  an  honorable  liveli 
hood,  and  he  who  could  make  most  was  the  most  enter 
prising  and  respectable.  Large  and  small  manufactories 
of  it  were  everywhere  erected,  in  which  all  the  earthly 
goods  of  their  owners  were  invested.  Wagons  drew  it 
from  town  to  town ;  boats  bore  it  from  clime  to  clime,  and 
the  winds  wafted  it  from  nation  to  nation;  and  mer 
chants  bought  and  sold  it,  by  wholesale  and  retail,  with 
precisely  the  same  feelings  on  the  part  of  the  seller, 
buyer,  or  bystander  as  are  felt  at  the  buying  and  selling 
of  plows,  beef,  bacon,  or  any  other  of  the  real  necessi 
ties  of  life.  Universal  public  opinion  not  only  tolerated, 

5  Carl   Schurz,  "Essay — Abraham  Lincoln." 

"The  boy  Lincoln,  learning  to  write,  practiced  on  a  wooden 
shovel  scraped  white,  and  on  a  bass  wood  shingle.  Seeing  boys 
put  a  burning  coal  on  the  back  of  a  wood  turtle,  he  was  moved 
to  write  on  cruelty  to  animals.  Seeing  men  intoxicated  with 
whiskey,  he  wrote  on  temperance." 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  21 

but  recognized  and  adopted  its  use.  It  is  true  that  even 
then  it  was  known  and  acknowledged  that  many  were 
greatly  injured  by  it;  but  none  seemed  to  think  the  in 
jury  arose  from  the  use  of  a  bad  thing,  but  from  the 
abuse  of  a  very  good  thing. 

General  Neal  Dow  gives  many  illustrations  of  the 
sentiment  as  to  liquor.  He  was  born  in  1804.  Writ 
ing  of  the  days  of  his  youth  (he  and  Lincoln  were 
nearly  the  same  age),  he  says: 

Liquor  was  found  place  on  all  occasions.  Town  meet 
ings,  musters,  firemen's  parades,  cattle  shows,  fairs,  and, 
in  short,  every  gathering  of  the  people  of  a  public  or 
social  nature,  resulted  almost  invariably  in  scenes  which, 
in  these  days,  would  shock  the  people  of  Maine  into  in 
dignation,  but  which  were  regarded  then  as  a  matter  of 
course.  Private  assemblies  were  little  better.  Wed 
dings,  balls,  parties,  huskings,  barn-raisings,  and  even 
funerals,  were  dependent  upon  intoxicants,  while  often 
religious  conferences  and  ministerial  gatherings  resulted 
in  an  increase  of  the  ordinary  consumption  of  liquors. 

The  same  writer  gives  an  account  of  the  liquors 
provided  at  the  dedication  of  a  church  building.  The 
first  minister  of  that  church  was  warned  by  his  offi 
cers  to  drink  less,  as  he  had  several  times  "appeared 
in  such  a  condition  that  he  could  scarcely  mount  the 
pulpit  stairs."  The  church,  though  it  at  length  dis 
missed  him,  was  so  divided  by  the  stand  taken  against 
liquor  that  it  was  almost  wrecked. 

General  Dow  also  tells  of  an  early  pastor  of  a  Port 
land  church  who  was  making  the  rounds  of  the  par- 


22  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

ish.  At  every  house  he  was  expected  to  "take  some 
thing,"  as  was  the  common  custom  of  ministers  at 
that  time.  The  good  parson,  after  accepting  many 
invitations  to  drink,  said : 

"Deacon,  this  will  never  do;  we  shall  be  drunkards 
together.  I  will  not  drink  any  more." 

Another  illuminating  incident  related  by  General 
Dow  concerns  the  collapse  of  the  frame  of  a  church, 
some  miles  in  the  country,  by  which  a  number  of  peo 
ple  were  injured.  The  accident  was  caused  by  some 
drunken  men  engaged  in  constructing  the  edifice. 
When  teams  came  to  Portland  for  doctors  to  set  the 
broken  limbs  and  repair  other  damages  they  found 
the  physicians  at  some  festive  gathering  in  such 
drunken  condition  that  the  injured  men  had  to  wait  un 
til  the  next  day  to  get  surgical  help.  It  was  after  this 
incident  that  the  people  made  the  discovery  that  men 
"could  do  hard  work  without  rum,"  and  one  man  who 
built  a  large  house  offered  the  workmen,  if  they  would 
abstain  from  strong  drink,  more  than  the  cost  of  the 
liquor  ration.6 

In  those  days  reputable  people,  some  of  them  offi 
cers  of  the  church,  sold  liquor  in  their  stores.  Gen 
eral  Dow  affirms  that  an  examination  of  the  account 
books  of  the  country  stores  from  1820  to  1840  showed 
that  a  majority  of  the  entries  were  for  liquor.  D.  R. 
Locke  (the  Petroleum  V.  Nasby  of  the  Toledo  Blade), 
who  investigated  prohibition  in  Maine,  said  that  he 
found  one  set  of  books  in  a  village  store  in  which 
6  Neal  Dow,  "Reminiscences,"  pp.  159-171. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  23 

eighty-four  per  cent  of  the  entries  were  for  rum.  All 
sorts  of  clothing  and  groceries  "appeared  at  rare  in 
tervals,  but  rum  was  splotched  on  every  page." 

One  of  the  men  closely  associated  with  Lincoln's 
life  as  a  young  man, — before  the  future  President  be 
came  a  resident  of  Springfield, — was  Dr.  John  Allen. 
He  was  Lincoln's  physician  at  a  critical  period.  At  the 
time  of  the  death  of  Ann  Rutledge,  Lincoln's  first  love 
and  fiancee,  his  health  was  broken  and  he  had  a  pro 
tracted  illness  from  chills  and  fever.  Dr.  Allen  urged 
Lincoln  to  go  to  the  home  of  Bowling  Greene,  and 
Greene  and  his  wife,  under  the  good  physician's  direc 
tion,  nursed  him  back  to  health  and  strength. 

Dr.  Allen  was  noted  as  a  sturdy  opponent  of  both 
slavery  and  intemperance.  He  was  an  active  worker 
in  the  Washingtonian  movement,  and  many  of  the 
early  settlers  strongly  opposed  his  crusades  against 
liquor.  One  of  his  associates  in  this  temperance  work 
was  Rev.  John  Berry,  whose  son  was  Lincoln's  part 
ner  I'n  the  Salem  store.  Young  Berry's  drinking  hab 
its  helped  wreck  the  business.  The  father,  however, 
had  much  influence  over  Lincoln. 

Even  in  the  churches  of  that  day  there  was  strong 
opposition  to  meddling  with  the  liquor  business. 
Mentor  Graham,  the  school-teacher  who  helped  Lin 
coln  prepare  for  his  surveying  work,  was  a  member 
of  the  "Hardshell"  Baptist  Church.  He  became  an  ar 
dent  advocate  of  temperance.  At  a  meeting  of  the 
church  to  consider  this  reform  movement,  Graham  by 
a  unanimous  vote  was  suspended  from  membership 


24  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

because  of  his  activities  in  the  cause  of  total  absti 
nence.  At  the  same  meeting  the  church  suspended 
another  member  who  was  found  "dead  drunk." 

An  inquisitive  member  took  exception  to  this  action 
of  the  congregation.  Taking  a  partly  filled  flask  of 
liquor  from  his  pocket,  he  shook  it  in  the  face  of  the 
congregation,  and  in  the  nasal  drawls  associated  with 
Hardshell  religious  meetings,  said  : 

"Brethering,  you  have  turned  one  member  out  be- 
ca'se  he  would  not  drink  and  another  beca'se  he  got 
drunk,  and  now  I  want  to  ask  a  question :  How  much 
of  this  'ere  critter  does  one  have  to  drink  to  remain  in 
full  fellowship  in  this  church?"  7 

The  late  William  Reynolds  of  Peoria,  Illinois,  noted 
as  a  Sunday-school  worker,  is  authority  for  the  state 
ment  that  churches  of  this  type  resented  all  interfer 
ence  with  slavery  or  liquor-drinking,  and  strongly  op 
posed  Sunday  schools.  One  of  their  preachers,  ac 
cording  to  Mr.  Reynolds,  took  as  his  text  for  a  ser 
mon:  "The  gates  of  hell  shall  not  prevail."  There 
were  four  gates  of  hell,  he  said.  The  first  was  those 
Bible  societies  that  were  putting  the  Scriptures  in  the 
hands  of  the  unlearned.  The  second  was  the  Repub 
lican  party,  which  was  in  favor  of  freeing  the  niggers 

7  Rankin,  "Personal  Recollections,"  p.  78. 

The  first  American  Temperance  Society  on  record  was  formed 
in  Massachusetts  in  1820;  and  this  was  the  pledge: 

"We,  the  undersigned,  recognizing  the  evils  of  drunkenness 
and  resolved  to  check  its  alarming  increase,  with  consequent 
poverty,  misery,  and  crime  among  our  people,  hereby  solemnly 
pledge  ourselves  that  we  will  not  get  drunk  more  than  four  times 
a  year,  viz.,  Fourth  of  July,  Muster  Day,  Christmas  Day,  and 
Sheep-Shearing." 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  25 

and  went  around  preaching  nigger  equality.  The 
third  was  the  Sunday  school,  which  professed  to  teach 
the  Scripture  but  was  really  getting  the  young  peo 
ple  together  for  a  frolic  on  the  Lord's  Day  and  getting 
them  to  hanker  after  one  another.  The  fourth  gate 
of  hell  was  those  temperance  societies  that  went  around 
smelling  people's  breaths  and  interfering  with  the  peo 
ple's  personal  liberty  to  take  a  little  something  for 
their  stomachs'  sake  and  many  infirmities.  "But,"  he 
concluded,  "the  gates  of  hell  shall  not  prevail  against 
the  church." 


CHAPTER  II 

LINCOLN  AS  A  SUFFERER  FROM  DRINK 

A  common  saying  among  apologists  for  drink  has 
been:  "You  let  liquor  alone  and  it  will  let  you  alone." 
Many  facts  prove  this  an  untruth.  Innocent  and  ab 
staining  wives  and  children  and  sober  fathers  and 
mothers  are  often  great  sufferers  because  some  one 
near  and  dear  to  them  has  become  a  victim  of  alco 
holic  liquor.  The  drink  traffic, — producing  through 
its  victim  poverty,  crime,  and  disease, — lays  heavy 
burdens  on  the  sober  part  of  the  community.  Many 
burdensome  taxes  are  caused  or  increased  by  the  need 
of  caring  for  criminals,  paupers,  and  people  rendered 
mentally  and  physically  infirm  as  a  result  of  drink. 

When  quite  a  young  man  Lincoln  was  returning 
home  one  evening  with  some  companions  after  a  hard 
day's  work  threshing  wheat.  They  found  a  man  ly 
ing  by  the  roadside.  He  was  an  old  and  respectable 
neighbor,  but  hopelessly  drunk.  All  efforts  failed  to 
rouse  the  man  to  help  himself.  Lincoln's  companions 
said :  "He  has  made  his  bed ;  let  him  lie  in  it."  It 
was  a  cold  night,  and  the  man  would  have  perished 
if  this  inhuman  resolution  had  been  carried  out.  Lin 
coln,  however,  without  help,  took  the  poor  inebriate, 
who  was  a  big  man,  on  his  shoulders,  and  carried  him 

27 


28  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

a  long  distance  to  the  cabin  of  Dennis  Hawks,  where 
he  built  a  fire,  warmed  and  rubbed  the  man,  and  cared 
for  him  during  the  night.  It  is  recorded  that  this 
drunkard  reformed  and  showed  a  lifelong  gratitude  to 
Lincoln  for  saving  his  life.1  Abraham  Lincoln  carry 
ing  that  drunken  man  was  typical  of  the  sober  com 
munity  caring  for  the  victims  of  drink. 

While  Lincoln  was  a  lifelong  abstainer,  he  suffered 
many  things  from  drink.  His  own  father  was  not  a 
drunkard.  According  to  Herndon,  he  "had  no  marked 
aversion  for  the  bottle,  but  indulged  no  more  freely 
than  the  average  Kentuckian  of  his  day."  2  There  are 
indications,  however,  that  a  number  of  Lincoln's  rela 
tives  and  friends  were  victims  of  drink. 

While  he  was  a  clerk  in  the  store  at  New  Salem, 
Lincoln  had  often  to  deal  with  the  rude  crowds  that 
came  to  the  village.  The  "Clary's  Grove  boys"  were 
a  lawless,  rollicking  crowd;  and  often,  under  the  in 
fluence  of  liquor,  committed  outrages  upon  innocent 
people.  Lincoln  proved  himself  their  superior  in 
feats  of  physical  strength  and  gained  such  power  over 
them  that  under  his  pressure  many  of  their  ruffian 
performances  were  ended. 

One  of  the  most  painful  trials  of  Lincoln's  life  was 
occasioned  by  his  business  relations  with  William  F. 
Berry.  Berry  and  Lincoln  formed  a  business  part 
nership,  purchased  the  groceries  of  the  village,  and 
consolidated  them.  The  partners,  having  no  money, 
gave  their  notes  for  about  fifteen  hundred  dollars. 

1  Lamon,  "Life  of  Lincoln,"  p.  57. 
1  Herndon  and  Weik,  Vol.  I,  p.  8. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  29 

Berry,  who  was  the  son  of  a  Presbyterian  minister, 
was  a  hard  drinker  and  a  gambler.  It  is  said  that  he 
spent  most  of  his  time  drinking  liquor,  while  Lincoln 
was  absorbed  in  reading,  with  the  result  that  the  busi 
ness  enterprise  proved  a  failure.  The  drunken  part 
ner  let  Lincoln  bear  the  whole  burden  of  the  indebted 
ness.  For  fifteen  years  Lincoln  carried  the  heavy 
load.  He  spoke  of  it  often  as  the  "national  debt." 
He  told  the  creditors  he  would  pay  them,  and  they  be 
lieved  him.  The  notes,  with  the  high  interest  then 
prevailing,  were  finally  paid  while  Lincoln  was  a  mem 
ber  of  Congress.  Afterwards  he  told  a  friend: 
"That  debt  was  the  greatest  obstacle  in  my  life."  Allen 
Thorndike  Rice  says : 

Ruined  by  a  drunken  partner,  he  failed,  but  as  money 
came  to  him  he  paid  his  honest  debts.8 

It  is  quite  in  harmony  with  the  cruelty  of  the  alco 
holic  liquor  traffic,  which  ruined  Lincoln's  business 
through  his  associate,  to  spread  a  slander  upon  the 
memory  of  the  innocent  sufferer.  The  saloon  inter 
ests  even  now  try  to  lend  to  their  traffic  a  cloak  of  re 
spectability  by  using  the  name  of  Lincoln  and  claim 
ing  him  as  a  business  partner. 

Dr.  Sturtevant  records  that  when  he  was  a  boy  he 
saw  Lincoln  many  times.  His  father,  President 
Sturtevant,  of  Jacksonville,  one  of  Lincoln's  friends 
and  advisers,  came  home  one  day  from  a  trip  and  said 
in  the  family  circle :  "I  saw  Abraham  Lincoln  on  the 

3  Rice,  "Reminiscences,"  p.  4. 


30  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

train.  I  said  to  him  :  'Many  of  us  are  praying  for  your 
success  at  the  polls.'  Lincoln,  as  one  of  those  sad 
flashes  passed  over  his  face,  replied:  'I  don't  know, 
President  Sturtevant,  I  don't  know.  We  are  dealing 
with  men  who  had  just  as  soon  He  as  not.' '  So,  after 
Lincoln's  death,  the  liquor  advocates,  in  their  propa 
ganda,  have  not  hesitated  to  make  false  statements 
and  have  even  fabricated  speeches  in  favor  of  their 
cause. 

Dr.  Sturtevant  admits  that,  while  Lincoln  never  was 
a  saloonkeeper,  probably  as  a  storekeeper  he  did  for  a 
little  while  sell  liquor,  but  he  adds : 

That  is  not  strange,  considering  the  ideas  of  the  time 
and  the  circumstances  of  his  bringing-up.  But,  consid 
ering  the  views  of  the  people  with  whom  I  spent  my 
youth,  it  seems  impossible  that  there  could  have  been 
anything  seriously  wrong  in  Lincoln's  habits  about  the 
use  of  liquor,  and  I  never  heard  of  it. 

Lincoln's  own  account  of  his  mercantile  experience 
we  find  in  the  short  autobiography  written  in  June, 
1860,  compiled  for  use  in  preparing  a  campaign  bi 
ography.  After  his  return  from  the  Black  Hawk 
war  he  was  a  candidate  for  the  Legislature.  This  was 
the  first  time  he  ran  for  office,  and,  as  he  says,  "the 
only  time  he  was  ever  beaten  on  the  direct  vote  of 
the  people."  He  was  now  without  means  and  out  of 
business,  but  was  anxious  to  remain  with  his  friends, 
who  had  treated  him  with  so  much  generosity,  espe 
cially  as  he  had  nowhere  else  to  go.  He  studied  what 
he  should  do :  thought  of  learning  the  blacksmith  trade, 
thought  of  trying  to  study  law, — rather  thought  he 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  31 

could  not  succeed  at  that  without  a  better  education. 
Before  long,  strangely  enough,  a  man  offered  to*  sell 
and  did  sell  to  Lincoln  and  another  as  poor  as  himself 
an  old  stock  of  goods  upon  credit;  and  he  says  that 
was  the  store.  Of  course  they  did  nothing  but  get 
deeper  and  deeper  in  debt.  At  that  time  Lincoln  was 
appointed  postmaster  at  New  Salem.  The  store 
"winked  out." 

The  advocates  of  the  saloon  have  not  only  claimed 
that  Lincoln  drank ;  they  have  also  tried  to  make  it  ap 
pear  that  he  was  a  liquor-seller.  There  can  be  found 
in  the  windows  of  saloons  what  is  styled,  "Reproduc 
tion  from  the  original  records  of  the  saloon  license  is 
sued  to  Abraham  Lincoln,"  published  by  the  National 
Retail  Liquor  Dealers'  Association. 

This  document  was  a  "license  to  keep  a  tavern" 
where  liquors  were  to  be  sold.  There  is  not  the  slight 
est  evidence  that  Mr.  Lincoln  ever  knew  of  the  appli 
cation.  His  name  is  signed  to  the  bond,  as  Miss  Tar- 
bell  says,  "by  some  other  than  himself,  very  likely  by 
his  partner,"  the  dissolute  Berry  heretofore  referred 
to.  The  partnership  had  been  in  a  store  which,  be 
cause  of  Berry's  drinking  habits  and  Lincoln's  inex 
perience,  was  a  financial  failure,  and  the  debts  of  which 
burdened  Lincoln  many  years.4  Nicolay  and  Hay 
say  "the  tavern  was  never  opened,"  and  yet  the  liquor 
people  publish  a  picture  of  "the  building  where  Abra 
ham  Lincoln  conducted  a  saloon."  5 

4Tarbell,  "Life  of  Lincoln,"  Vol.  I,  p.  96. 

"The  tavern  was  never  opened,  for  about  this  time  Lincoln 
and  Berry  were  challenged  to  sell  out  to  a  pair  of  vagrant 
brothers  named  Trent,  who,  as  they  had  no  idea  of  paying, 
were  willing  to  give  their  notes  for  any  amount  They  soon 


32  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

In  the  first  Lincoln-Douglas  debate  at  Ottawa, 
August  21,  1858,  in  his  reply  to  Douglas'  statement 
that  he  had  been  a  grocery  keeper,  Lincoln  said :  "The 
Judge  is  woefully  at  fault  about  his  early  friend  Lin 
coln  being  a  grocery  keeper.  I  don't  know  as  it  would 
be  a  great  sin  if  I  had  been,  but  he  is  mistaken.  Lin 
coln  never  kept  a  grocery  anywhere  in  the  world.  It 
is  true  that  Lincoln  did  work  the  latter  part  of  one  win 
ter  in  a  little  still  house  up  at  the  head  of  a  hollow." 

The  New  York  Sun,  in  an  editorial  on  "The  Little 
Still  House,"  referring  to  the  charge  of  Douglas,  said : 

Of  course  if  he  kept  a  grocery  in  the  days  of  his  young 
manhood,  he  sold  rum.  Wet  goods  were  an  invaluable 
source  or  attraction  of  custom  in  the  "store."  Deacons 
vended  whiskey  and  gin.  A  grocer  was  a  grog-seller, 
but  Lincoln,  speaking  whimsically  in  the  third  person, 
said  he  had  never  kept  a  grocery,  but  had  worked  in  a 
little  still  house.  From  this  little  still  house  at  the  head 
of  a  hollow  grew  Douglas'  grocery  which  was  trans 
formed  into  a  doggery.  It  is  possible  enough  that  Lin 
coln's  "saloon  license"  exists  in  fac-simile  as  an  ornament 
of  saloons.  The  House  that  Jack  Built  is  the  progressive 
order  of  the  architecture  of  myth. 

The  Lincoln  legend-making  or  folk  history  goes  on. 
.  .  .  Possibly  some  wag  will  yet  build  the  little  still  house 
at  the  end  of  the  hollow,  discover  it  and  get  an  associa 
tion  to  buy  it.  The  renewed  interest  in  Lincoln's  "liquor 

ran  away,  and  Berry  expired,  extinguished  in  rum.  Lincoln 
was  thus  left  loaded  with  debts  and  with  no  assets  except  worth 
less  notes  of  Berry  and  the  Trents.  It  is  greatly  to  his  credit 
that  he  never  thought  of  doing  to  others  as  they  had  done  by 
him;  ...  he  paid  at  last  every  farthing  of  the  debt."  Nicolay 
and  Hay,  Vol.  I,  p.  in. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  33 

license"  may  indicate  that  he  is  to  figure  as  a  witness 
against  the  drys. 

As  to  the  failure  of  the  store  of  Berry  and  Lincoln, 
Leonard  Swett  states  that  Lincoln  was  absent  several 
months  in  the  Black  Hawk  war  and  continues : 

As  he  returned  home  he  found  his  old  partner  had  been 
his  own  best  customer  at  the  whiskey  barrel,  that  all  the 
goods  were  gone,  but  having  failed  to  pay  the  debts, 
there  were  eleven  hundred  dollars  for  which  Lincoln  was 
jointly  liable.  I  cannot  forget  his  face  of  seriousness  as 
he  turned  to  me  and  said :  "That  debt  was  the  greatest 
obstacle  I  have  ever  met  in  life.  I  had  no  way  of  specu 
lating  and  could  not  earn  money  except  by  labor,  and  to 
earn  eleven  hundred  dollars,  besides  my  living,  seemed 
the  work  of  a  lifetime.  There  was,  however,  but  one 
way.  I  went  to  the  creditors  and  told  them  if  they 
would  let  me  alone  I  would  give  them  all  I  could  earn 
over  my  living,  as  fast  as  I  could  earn  it." 

Mr.  Swett  says  further: 

A  difference,  however,  soon  arose  between  him  and 
his  partner  in  reference  to  the  introduction  of  whiskey 
into  the  establishment.  The  partner  insisted  that,  as 
honey  catches  flies,  a  barrel  of  whiskey  in  the  store  would 
invite  customers  and  their  sales  would  increase,  while 
Lincoln,  who  never  liked  liquor,  opposed  this  innovation.6 

Henry  B.  Rankin  refers  to  "Lincoln's  partner  in 
the  store  at  Salem,  whose  unfortunate  habit  of  drink- 

aRice,   "Reminiscences,"  p.   77. 


34  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

ing  brought  so  great  a  disaster  upon  the  business  that 
it  was  not  until  1850  that  Lincoln  was  able  to  pay  the 
last  debt  of  the  firm."  7 

W.  H.  Herndon,  the  long-time  partner  of  Lincoln, 
was  a  peculiar  man  with  many  brilliant  gifts  and  many 
weaknesses.  He  is  thus  described  by  Joseph  Fort 
Newton : 

All  through  his  career,  after  it  had  a  beginning,  he  had 
a  hard  fight  with  the  drink  habit,  with  many  victories 
and  occasional  bitter  defeats ;  a  battle  which  Lincoln 
watched  with  never- failing  pity.  That  was  environment, 
very  tragical  in  his  case  and  characteristic  of  the  period. 
But  Lincoln  knew  Herndon,  his  abilities  and  his  failings, 
his  qualities  of  mind  and  heart,  and  the  two  men  loved 
each  other  like  brothers  of  unequal  age.8 

Lincoln,  as  President  and  Commander-in-Chief  of 
the  army,  had  a  number  of  painful  and  perplexing  ex 
periences  caused  by  drinking  generals.  Colonel  Matis, 
for  years  connected  with  the  regular  army,  and  noted 
in  medical  and  military  affairs,  says:  "Half  of  the 
disasters,  both  personal  and  general,  in  military  life 
were  due  to  alcohol."  The  result  of  a  number  of  bat 
tles  in  the  Civil  War  was  affected  by  the  condition  of 
commanders  under  the  influence  of  drink. 

The  great  reputation  of  General  U.  S.  Grant  cannot 
now  be  affected  by  the  true  statement  that  his  great  ca 
reer  was  near  wreckage  several  times  because  of  drink. 

7  H.  B.  Rankin,  p.  78. 

8  Joseph    Fort    Newton,   "Lincoln   and    Herndon,"   p.    18.    Dr. 
Newton  is  now  pastor  of  the  City  Temple,  London,  England. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  35 

The  case  is  of  so  much  interest  and  importance  that 
particulars  may  be  given  to  show  how  nearly  General 
John  Barleycorn  robbed  us  of  our  greatest  military 
chieftain. 

As  a  young  man,  Grant  was  almost  a  Puritan  in 
his  life  and  habits.  He  learned  to  use  both  liquor 
and  tobacco  during  the  Mexican  War, — after  he  was 
twenty-five  years  of  age.  He  was  easily  affected  by 
liquor,  and  a  single  glass  produced  a  visible  effect. 
He  himself  fully  realized  his  danger,  and  after  his  re 
turn  from  Mexico  he  helped  organize  in  the  barracks 
a  lodge  of  the  "Sons  of  Temperance,"  giving  its  work 
hearty  encouragement. 

When  promoted  to  a  captaincy  Grant  was  sent  to 
the  Pacific  coast.  There  he  had  dreary  surroundings 
and  an  unsympathetic  commander,  and  on  one  occa 
sion,  under  the  influence  of  liquor,  he  was  unable  to 
perform  his  duty.  His  colonel  told  him  to  "reform 
or  resign."  Grant  said:  "I  will  resign  and  reform." 
Following  his  resignation  came  years  of  poverty  and 
struggle  in  St.  Louis.  He  drank  at  intervals,  but 
through  the  influence  of  his  wife  seemed  to  win  a  vic 
tory  over  his  habits.9 

The  California  record  stood  in  the  way  of  Grant's 
getting  rank  and  position  at  the  opening  of  the  war. 
Generals  Fremont,  McClellan,  and  Pope  treated  him 
as  a  man  with  a  doubtful  past.  After  he  had  won 
recognition  and  was  commissioned  as  Brigadier-Gen- 

9  Hamlin  Garland,  "Life  of  Grant,"  p.  127.  In  the  lately  pub 
lished  letters  of  Mark  Twain  there  is  a  remarkable  letter  on 
General  Grant's  drinking  habits. 


36  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

eral  there  were  occasions  when  he  yielded  to  the  old 
appetite,  and  it  required  the  loving  care  of  his  wife 
and  the  devoted  friendship  of  his  chief  of  staff,  Gen 
eral  Rawlins,  to  guard  him  from  the  danger  of  drink. 
To  quote  James  Ford  Rhodes  in  this  connection,  he 
says  that  at  the  time  of  the  siege  of  Vicksburg,  while 
suffering  from  lassitude  and  depression  during  the 
hot  weather,  "Grant  on  one  occasion  yielded  to  his  ap 
petite  for  drink."  Following  this  lapse,  General  Raw 
lins  wrote  to  Grant  the  remarkable  letter  in  which  he 
said : 

The  great  solicitude  I  feel  for  the  safety  of  this  army 
leads  me  to  mention  what  I  had  hoped  never  again  to  do, 
the  subject  of  your  drinking.  .  .  .  To-night  I  find  you 
where  the  wine  bottle  has  just  been  emptied,  in  company 
with  those  who  drink  and  urge  you  to  do  likewise,  and 
the  lack  of  your  usual  promptness  of  decision  and  clear 
ness  in  expressing  yourself  in  writing  tended  to  confirm 
my  suspicions.  .  .  .  You  have  the  full  control  of  your 
appetite  and  can  let  drinking  alone.  Had  you  not  pledged 
me  the  sincerity  of  your  honor  early  last  March  that  you 
would  drink  no  more  during  the  war,  and  kept  your 
pledge  during  your  recent  campaign,  you  would  not  to 
day  have  stood  first  in  the  world's  history  as  a  successful 
military  leader.  Your  only  salvation  depends  upon  your 
strict  adherence  to  that  pledge.  You  cannot  succeed  in 
any  other  way. 

Rhodes  then  relates  how  "Rawlins  removed  a  box  of 
wine  in  front  of  Grant's  tent  that  had  been  sent  him  to 
celebrate  his  prospective  entrance  into  Vicksburg,  and 
next  morning  he  searched  every  suspected  tent  for  liq- 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  37 

uor  and  broke  every  bottle  he  found  on  a  neaby  stump." 
After  citing  Lincoln's  words  uttered  when  Lee  was 
invading  Pennsylvania  and  Hooker  was  still  in  com 
mand  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac, — "How  much  de 
pends  in  military  matters  on  one  master  mind!"- 
Rhodes  compares  Grant  and  the  Confederate  com 
manders,  adding: 

"He  was  a  greater  general  than  'Stonewall'  Jack 
son,  but  he  might  have  been  still  greater  could  he  have 
said  with  Jackson, — changing  only  the  name  of  Fed 
eral  to  Confederate, — 'I  love  whiskey,  but  I  never  use 
it;  I  am  more  afraid  of  it  than  I  am  of  Confederate 
bullets." 

And  he  goes  on  to  say: 

"The  anxiety  of  the  President  and  his  advisers  over 
the  Vicksburg  campaign  was  intense,  and  their  domi 
nant  idea  as  expressed  by  a  friend  of  Stanton's  was, 
'If  we  keep  Grant  sober  we  shall  take  Vicksburg.'  "  10 

One  more  reference  is  made  by  Rhodes  to  the  weak 
ness  of  the  great  General,  which  overcame  him  after 
the  unsuccessful  attack  on  Petersburg,  when  "the  bit 
terness  of  disappointment  drove  him  for  a  while  to 
drink." 

According  to  Rawlins,  "Grant  digressed  from  his 
true  path"  twice  after  this,  but  after  the  last  deviation 
he  pulled  himself  together  and  did  not  again  falter. 
And  Rhodes  adds: 

It  was  an  unclouded  brain  that  carried  on  the  siege  of 
Petersburg  to  its  capture,  forced  the  evacuation  of  Rich- 

10  James  Ford  Rhodes,  "History  of  the  Civil  War,"  pp.  255,  256. 


38  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

mond,  and  effected  the  final  discomfiture  of  Lee  and  the 
ruin  of  the  Southern  Confederacy.11 

President  Lincoln  was  repeatedly  warned  as  to 
Grant's  habits,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  re 
ports  as  to  his  excesses  were  greatly  exaggerated. 
When  men  visited  the  President  and  urged  Grant's  re 
moval  from  his  high  command  because  he  drank,  Lin 
coln  said : 

"I  can't  spare  this  man ;  he  fights.  Tell  me  the  kind 
of  whiskey  he  drinks ;  I  should  like  to  send  a  barrel 
to  some  of  the  other  generals," 

This  bit  of  grim  pleasantry  brings  to*  mind  the  story 
of  King  George  of  England,  who,  when  told  that  Ad 
miral  Nelson  of  Trafalgar  fame  was  "mad,"  said : 
"I  will  get  him  to  bite  some  of  the  other  officers." 

The  case  of  General  Hooker  cost  Lincoln  many 
hours  o-f  anxious  suffering.  When  "Fighting  Joe" 
was  appointed  to  the  command  of  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac  the  President  had  been  advised  about  his 
weakness  for  liquor,  and  plainly  warned  him  about  it. 
At  the  disastrous  battle  of  Chancellorsville  it  was 
charged  that  during  the  engagement  Hooker  drank 
freely  to  celebrate  his  early  successes  in  the  battle. 
General  Carl  Schurz,  however,  expresses  doubts  about 
Hooker's  intoxication  at  that  time.  He  says: 

The  weight  of  competent  witnesses  is  strongly  against 
this  theory.  It  is  asserted,  on  the  other  hand,  that  he 
was  accustomed  to  the  consumption  of  a  certain  quantity 
of  whiskey  every  day;  that  during  the  battle  he  utterly 

11  James  Ford   Rhodes,  "History  of  the  Civil  War,"  p.  325. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  39 

abstained  from  his  usual  potations,  for  fear  of  taking 
too  much  inadvertently,  and  that  his  brain  failed  to  work 
because  he  had  not  given  it  the  stimulus  to  which  it  had 
been  habituated.12 


General  O.  O.  Howard  thus  refers  to  this  instance 
of  defeat  through  drink  in  the  war  for  the  LTnion : 

In  one  of  our  great  battles  we  suffered  defeat  and 
many  of  us  have  believed  that  the  mistake  which  caused 
the  defeat  was  due  to  an  excess  of  whiskey  drunk  by  the 
officer  in  command.  I  had  the  testimony,  from  an  offi 
cer  who  was  with  him,  that  pitchers  of  liquor  were 
brought  to  his  table  and  that  he  and  those  around  him 
drank  as  freely  from  them  as  if  they  contained  only 
water.  The  orders  the  commander  gave  were  the  di 
rect  opposite  from  what  he  would  have  given  had  he  not 
been  suddenly  confused  by  drink.  A  heavy  loss  of  men 
and  material  and  a  dreadful  defeat  for  our  cause  was 
the  result.13 

There  has  been  much  controversy  over  General 
Hooker's  apparent  stupefaction  at  the  crisis  of  the  bat 
tle.  Some  have  believed  that  he  was  disabled  by  the 
shock  of  a  cannon-ball  striking  a  post  near  which  he 
was  standing. 

Secretary  of  the  Navy  Welles,  in  his  "Diary,"  makes 
this  record : 

Sumner  expresses  an  absolute  want  of  confidence  in 
Hooker,  saying  he  knows  him  to  be  a  blasphemous 

'  "Reminiscences  of  Carl  Schurz,"  Vol.  II,  p.  430. 
13  "Autobiography  of  O.  O.  Howard." 


40  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

wretch,  that  after  crossing  the  Rappahannock  and  reach 
ing  Centerville,  Hooker  exultingly  exclaimed,  "The  en 
emy  are  in  my  power  and  God  Almighty  cannot  deprive 
me  of  them."  I  have  heard  before  of  this,  but  not  so 
direct  or  positive.  The  sudden  paralysis  that  followed 
when  the  army,  in  the  midst  of  a  successful  career,  was 
suddenly  checked  and  commenced  its  retreat,  has  never 
been  explained.  Whiskey  is  said  by  Sumner  to  have 
done  the  work.  The  President  said  that  if  Hooker  had 
been  killed  by  the  shock  which  knocked  over  the  pillar 
that  stunned  him  we  would  have  been  successful.14 

The  bloody  and  humiliating  defeat  at  Chancellors- 
ville  caused  Mr.  Lincoln  great  suffering.  Whether  we 
accept  the  Schnrz  explanation  of  Hooker's  abstinence 
from  his  habitual  potations  of  whiskey  or  Sumner's 
belief  in  his  actual  drunkenness,  drink  was  the  cause 
of  the  disaster. 

Lincoln's  suffering  when  he  received  the  news  of 
the  retreat  of  the  army  was  most  intense.  Noah 
Brooks  who,  with  an  old  friend  of  Lincoln's,  was 
waiting  in  the  White  House,  says : 

A  door  opened,  and  Lincoln  appeared,  holding  an  open 
telegram  in  his  hand.  The  sight  of  his  face  and  figure 
was  frightful.  He  seemed  stricken  with  death.  Almost 
tottering  to  a  chair,  he  sat  down,  and  then  I  mechanically 
noticed  that  his  face  was  of  the  same  color  as  the  wall 
behind  him— not  pale,  not  even  sallow,  but  gray  like 
ashes.  Extending  the  dispatch  to  me,  he  said  with  a  hol 
low,  far-off  voice,  "Read  it — news  from  the  army."  The 
telegram  was  from  General  Butterfield,  then,  I  think, 

14  "Diary  of  Gideon  Welles,"  Vol.  I,  p.  336. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  41 

chief  of  staff  to  Hooker.  It  was  very  brief,  simply  say 
ing  that  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  had  "safely  recrossed 
the  Rappahannock"  and  was  now  at  its  old  position  on 
the  north  bank  of  that  stream.  The  President's  friend, 
Dr.  Henry,  an  old  man  and  somewhat  impressionable, 
burst  into  tears,  not  so  much,  probably,  at  the  news  as 
on  account  of  its  effect  upon  Lincoln.  The  President 
regarded  the  old  man  for  an  instant  with  dry  eyes,  and 
said,  "What  will  the  country  say?  Oh,  what  will  the 
country  say?"  He  seemed  hungry  for  consolation  and 
cheer,  and  sat  a  little  while  talking  about  the  failure.  Yet 
it  did  not  seem  that  he  was  disappointed  so  much  for 
himself,  but  that  he  thought  the  country  would  be.15 

This  disaster  prompted  the  striking  poem  of  E.  C. 
Stedman,  entitled,  "Wanted,  A  Man."  Lincoln  was 
so  impressed  with  it,  that  he  read  to  his  cabinet  the 
poem,16  which  runs : 

Back  from  the  trebly  crimsoned  field 
Terrible  words   are  thunder-tossed ; 
Full  of  the  wrath  that  will  not  yield, 
Full  of  revenge  for  battles  lost. 
Hark  to  their  echo,  as  it  crossed 
The  capital,  making  faces  wan, 
End  this  murderous   holocaust — 
Abraham  Lincoln,  give  us  a  Man! 

No  leader  to  shirk  the  boasting  foe 

And  to  march  and  countermarch  our  brave 

Till  they  fall  like  ghosts  in  the  marshes  low 

And   swamp-grass  covers  each  nameless  grave ; 

Nor  another  whose  fatal  banners  wave 

Aye  in  Disaster's  shameful  van; 

Nor  another  to  bulster  and  lie  and  rave — 

Abraham  Lincoln,  give  us  a  Alan! 

15  Noah  Brooks,  "Life  of  Lincoln." 

18  Browne,  "Every  Day  Life  of  Lincoln,"  p.  494. 


42  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

Is  there  never  one  in  all  the  land, 

One  on   whose  might  the   Cause  may  lean  ? 

Are  all  the  common  ones  so  mean? 

What  if  your  failure  may  have  been 

In  trying  to  make  good  bread  from  bran, 

From  worthless  metal  a  weapon  keen? 

Abraham  Lincoln,  find  us  a  Man! 

There  is  no  official  record  of  the  large  number  O'f 
officers  whose  resignations  were  forced  on  account  of 
their  drink  habits,  but  it  is  generally  known  that  many 
were  dismissed  by  courts  martial,  on  account  of  their 
conduct  while  under  the  influence  of  liquor. 

Mr.  Lincoln  endured  much  mortification  from  the 
drinking  excesses  of  Vice-President  Johnson.  "When 
the  Republicans  were  denouncing  Andrew  Johnson 
after  his  maudlin  speech  on  the  4th  of  March,  1865, 
he  only  said,  'Poor  Andy,'  and  expressed  the  hope  that 
he  would  profit  by  his  dreadful  mistakes." 

In  the  awful  tragedy  of  Lincoln's  assassination 
liquor  had  its  part.  Nicolay  and  Hay  give  a  vivid  de 
scription  of  the  scenes  associated  with  that  calamity. 
They  refer  to  the  assassin  in  this  way:  "Partisan 
hate  and  the  fumes  of  brandy  had  for  weeks  kept  his 
brain  in  a  morbid  state."  Booth  and  his  co-conspira 
tors  held  their  councils  in  saloons  and  barrooms. 
"Just  before  he  entered  the  theater  for  his  murderous 
attack,  he  rushed  into  a  near-by  saloon,  ordered  a 
glass  of  brandy  and  gulped  it  down."  1T 

It  is  a  grim  comment  on  the  heartlessness  as  well 
as  the  stupidity  of  the  liquor  traffic  that  at  the  cen- 

17  Nicolay  and  Hay,  Vol.  X,  p.  295. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  43 

tennial  celebration  of  Lincoln's  birthday,  in  this  Wash 
ington  saloon  was  this  notice : 

HERE  is  WHERE  JOHN  WILKES  BOOTH  GOT  HIS  LAST 
DRINK. 

Lord  Charnwood,  referring  to  the  assassin  Booth, 
said: 

In  him  that  peculiarly  ferocious  political  passion  which 
occasionally  showed  itself  among  Southerners  was  fur 
ther  inflamed  by  brandy  and  by  that  ranting  mode  of 
thought. which  the  stage  develops  in  some  few.18 

William  H.  Crook  says: 

Booth  had  found  it  necessary  to  stimulate  himself  with 
whiskey  in  order  to  reach  the  proper  pitch  of  fanaticism. 

Speaking  of  the  last  days  of  Lincoln's  life,  Crook 
writes : 

In  crossing  over  to  the  War  Department  we  passed 
some  drunken  men.  Possibly  their  violence  suggested 
the  thought  to  the  President.  After  we  had  passed  them, 
Mr.  Lincoln  said  to  me,  "Crook,  do  you  know  I  believe 
there  are  men  who  want  to  take  my  life?"  Then  after 
a  pause  he  said,  half  to  himself,  "And  I  have  no  doubt 
they  will  do  it."  Crook,  dismayed,  asked,  "Why  do  you 
think  so  ?"  His  reply  was :  "Other  men  have  been  as 
sassinated.  .  .  .  If  it  is  to  be  done  it  is  impossible  to  pre 
vent  it."  10 

18  Charnwood,  "Abraham  Lincoln,"  p.  448. 

19  Crook,  "Through  Five  Administrations,"  pp.  66,  73. 


CHAPTER  III 

LINCOLN    AS    AN    ABSTAINER 

Abraham  Lincoln  was  a  man  oi  remarkable  physi 
cal  strength,  and  to  the  end  of  his  life  was  capable  of 
enduring  tests  that  would  crush  most  men. 

"The  sturdy  constitution  that  Lincoln  inherited  from 
five  generations  of  pioneers,"  says  Arnold,  one  of  his 
biographers,  "was  hardened  by  the  toil  and  exposure 
to  which,  even  more  than  most  backwoods  boys,  he 
was  subjected  from  early  childhood." 

One  of  the  well  authenticated  stories  of  his  great 
strength  is  directly  connected  with  liquor.  A  friend, 
William  G.  Greene,  made  a  wager  that  Lincoln  could 
lift  a  cask  holding  forty  gallons  of  whiskey  high 
enough  to  drink  out  of  the  bunghole.  It  is  said  that 
"he  squatted  down  and  lifted  the  cask  to  his  knees, 
rolling  it  over  until  his  mouth  was  opposite  the  bung." 
His  friend  Greene  cried  out,  "I  have  won  my  bet,  but 
that  is  the  first  dram  of  whiskey  I  ever  saw  you  swal 
low,  Abe."  "And  I  haven't  swallowed  that,  you  see," 
said  Lincoln  as  he  spurted  out  the  liquor.1  Comment 
ing  on  this  anecdote,  Mr.  Arnold  writes : 

In  this  final  episode  of  the  little  story  is  to  be  found 
a  clue,  if  not  to  the  source  of  his  extraordinary  vigor, 

1  Whitney,  "Life  of  Lincoln,"  p.  85. 

45 


46  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

at  least  to  its  continued  preservation,  unimpaired  by  the 
vices  that  have  shorn  so  many  Samsons  of  their  strength. 
.  .  .  He  grew  up  strong  in  body,  healthful  in  mind,  with 
no  bad  habits,  no  stain  of  intemperance,  profanity  or  vice. 
He  used  neither  tobacco  nor  intoxicating  drinks,  and  thus 
living  he  grew  to  be  six  feet  four  inches  high  and  a  giant 
in  strength.2 


So  remarkable  were  Lincoln's  feats  of  strength  in 
wrestling,  lifting  heavy  weights,  chopping  down  trees 
and  splitting  rails,  that  he  has  been  called  a  "Samson 
of  the  backwoods."  He  had  the  strength  of  a  giant, 
united  with  all  the  signs  of  a  physical  health  that  would 
have  carried  him  to>  a  great  age.  His  freedom  from 
every  form  of  vice  was  in  entire  harmony  with  the 
advanced  ethical  ideas  of  our  day. 

In  the  time  of  his  young  manhood  the  great  men 
that  Lincoln  specially  admired  were  Clay  and  Web 
ster,  and  both  of  these  were  excessive  drinkers. 
Stephen  A.  Douglas,  his  longtime  political  opponent, 
was  a  remarkable  man,  but  in  marked  contrast  to  Lin 
coln  in  personal  habits  as  well  as  in  moral  ideals,  Hor 
ace  White  says  of  Douglas:  "Although  patriotic  be 
yond  a  doubt,  he  was  color-blind  to  moral  principles 
in  politics  and  stone-blind  to  the  evils  of  slavery."  3 
Douglas  was  also  so  given  to  drink  that  he  was  unable 
to  fill  a  number  of  public  engagements  because  o>f  his 
drunken  condition;  and  the  last  days  of  his  life  were 
filled  with  excessive  drinking. 

2  Arnold,  "Life  of  Abraham  Lincoln,"  p.  26. 
8  Horace  White's  pamphlet,  "Lincoln  in  1854." 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  47 

The  incident  related  by  Mr.  Greene  occurred  long 
before  the  modern  discovery  that  alcohol  was  not  a 
stimulant  but  a  poison,  and  that  instead  o>f  being  a  help 
to  strength  it  is  a  source  of  weakness.  Lincoln's  an 
tagonism  to  drink  seems  to  have  been  instinctive. 
There  are  also  traditions  that  his  mother  warned  her 
boy  of  the  dangers  of  drink  and  made  him  promise 
to  be  an  abstainer. 

Herndon  says : 

New  Salem  was  what  in  the  modern  parlance  of  large 
cities  would  be  called  a  fast  place,  and  it  was  difficult  for 
a  young  man  of  ordinary  moral  courage  to  resist  the 
temptations  that  beset  him  on  every  hand.  It  remains  a 
matter  of  surprise  that  Lincoln  was  able  to  retain  his 
popularity  with  the  hosts  of  young  men  of  his  own  age 
aud  still  not  join  them  in  their  drinking  bouts  and 
carousals.  One  of  his  companions  said,  "I  am  certain 
that  he  never  drank  any  intoxicating  liquors ;  he  did  not 
even,  in  those  days,  smoke  or  chew  tobacco."  4 

As  to  life  in  New  Salem,  Lord  Charnwood  has  this 
to  say : 

It  never  got  much  beyond  a  population  of  one  hundred, 
and,  like  many  similar  little  towns  of  the  West,  it  has 
long  since  perished  from  the  earth.  But  it  was  a  busy 
place  for  awhile,  and,  contrary  to  what  its  name  might 
suggest,  it  aspired  to  be  rather  fast.  It  was  a  cock- 
fighting  and  whiskey-drinking  society  into  which  Lin 
coln  was  launched.  He  managed  to  combine  strict  ab 
stinence  from  liquor  with  keen  participation  in  all  its 
other  diversions.5 

4  Herndon  and  Weik,  p.  108. 

5  Lord  Charnwood,  "Abraham  Lincoln,"  p.  63. 


48  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

Lincoln  stated  many  times  that  he  never  drank  liq 
uor,  and  his  own  repeated  declaration  ought  to  have 
long  ago  silenced  the  charges  of  the  champions  of  alco 
holic  beverages. 

Because  the  liquor  dealers'  associations  continue, 
however,  to  circulate  these  slanders,  it  is  necessary  to 
repeat  the  record  of  the  actual  facts.  Wherever  there 
is  a  saloon  contest,  posters  and  circulars  are  issued  by 
the  advocates  of  alcohol  claiming  that  Lincoln  used 
liquor  as  a  beverage.  Some  years  ago  a  man  de 
clared  that  he  had  been  on  intimate  terms  of  friend 
ship  with  Lincoln  and  that  repeatedly  they  drank  whis 
key  together.  The  interview  in  which  this  declara 
tion  was  made  was  widely  published  in  the  newspapers. 
In  order  to  establish  either  the  truth  or  falsity  of  the 
statement,  letters  of  inquiry  were  written  to  the  only 
survivor  of  Lincoln's  family, — his  son,  Robert  T.  Lin 
coln, — and  to  his  secretaries  and  biographers,  Hay  and 
Nicolay.  Their  replies,  in  possession  of  the  author, 
are  as  follows : 

(Private) 

4  DEC.,  '94, 

THE  TEMPLE,  CHICAGO. 
MY  DEAR  SIR: 

Assuming  that  you  will  make  no  publication  of  my 
reply  to  your  inquiry,  for  I  never  deny  a  newspaper 
statement  publicly,  it  gives  me  pleasure  to  let  you  know 
that  my  father  seemed  to  be  absolutely  devoid  of  the 
taste  which  is  gratified  by  wine  or  liquor  of  any  kind.  I 
have  seen  him  several  times  take  a  sip  of  wine  at  table, 
but  if  he  ever  did  anything  more  I  do  not  know  it.  He 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  49 

simply  cared  nothing  for  it.     Never  heard  him  speak  of 
the  matter  in  any  way. 

Very  truly  yours, 

ROBERT  T.  LINCOLN. 

WESTERN  RESERVE  BUILDING, 

CLEVELAND,  OHIO. 

Nov.  24,  1894. 
DEAR  SIR: 

Mr.  Lincoln  was  a  man  of  extremely  temperate  habits. 
He  made  no  use  of  either  whiskey  or  tobacco  during  all 
the  years  that  I  knew  him. 

Yours  very  truly, 

JOHN  HAY. 

WASHINGTON,  D.  C, 

Nov.  24,  1894. 
MY  DEAR  SIR: 

In  reply  to  your  inquiry  whether  Abraham  Lincoln 
was  "in  the  habit  of  drinking  whiskey"  I  answer  that 
during  all  the  nearly  five  years  of  my  service  as  his  pri 
vate  secretary  I  never  saw  him  take  a  drink  of  whiskey, 
and  never  knew  or  heard  of  his  taking  one.  The  story 
of  his  "being  in  the  habit  of  drinking  whiskey  and  some 
what  accomplished  in  that  line"  is  a  pure  fabrication. 

Allow  me  also  to  refer  you  to  Mr.  Lincoln's  "Address 
before  the  Springfield  Washingtonian  Temperance  Soci 
ety,"  February  22,  1842,  printed  in  full  on  pages  57  to 
64  in  Volume  I  of  our  "Abraham  Lincoln — Complete 
Works." 

Yours  truly, 

JNO.   G.   NICOLAY. 

Another  of  Lincoln's  secretaries,  William  O.  Stocl- 
dard,  still  living  at  this  writing,  writes  from  Madison, 


50  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

New  Jersey,   June  30,    1917,   in  reply  to  a  letter  of 
inquiry : 

You  have  somewhat  surprised  me.  I  did  not  know 
that  at  this  late  day  there  was  any  question  of  contro 
versy  as  to  the  lifelong  conduct  and  position  of  Abraham 
Lincoln  on  the  temperance  question. 

Robert  T.  Lincoln's  letter  is  marked  "Private,"  but 
in  a  later  note,  dated  June  30,  1915,  he  says:  "I  have 
no  objection  to  your  printing  the  letter  I  wrote  to  you 
on  December  4,  1894."  It  will  be  noticed  that  in  that 
letter  he  wrote:  "I  have  seen  him  several  times  take 
a  sip  of  wine  at  the  table,  but  if  he  ever  did  anything 
more  I  do  not  know  it."  It  is  evident  that  Lincoln 
himself  did  not  regard  this  taking  a  sip  of  wine  as  vio 
lating  the  spirit  of  his  repeated  pledges  of  total  ab 
stinence. 

In  addition  to  the  pledge  he  took  and  urged  upon 
others  of  the  Washingtonian  Society,  there  is  the  fol 
lowing  pledge  of  total  abstinence  given  by  him  on 
January  19,  1838,  in  connection  with  the  Sangamon 
Temperance  Society: 

The  members  of  this  society  agree  not  to  use  intoxi 
cating  liquor  or  provide  it  as  an  article  of  refreshment 
for  their  friends  nor  for  persons  in  their  employment, 
nor  will  they  use,  manufacture,  or  traffic  in  the  same  ex 
cept  for  chemical,  mechanical,  medicinal,  and  sacramen 
tal  purposes. 

Mr.  Lincoln  added  to  his  pledge :  "specially  never 
to  drink  ardent  spirits." 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  51 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  Lincoln  was  not  a  mem 
ber  of  any  fraternal  organization,  except  those  relat 
ing  to  temperance.  He  was  a  member  of  the  Sons 
of  Temperance.  The  pledge  of  this  order  was  as  fol 
lows  : 

I  will  neither  make,  buy,  sell  nor  use  as  a  beverage 
any  spirituous  or  malt  liquors,  wine,  or  cider. 

Leonard  Swett,  an  intimate  personal  friend  of  Lin 
coln's,  says  of  him : 

Not  more  than  a  year  before  he  was  elected  President 
he  told  me  that  he  had  never  tasted  liquor  in  his  life. 
"What?"  I  said,  "do  you  mean  to  say  you  never  tasted 
it?"  "Yes,  I  never  tasted  it." 

Shelby  M.  Cullom,  also  an  intimate  friend  of  Lin 
coln's,  who  lived  in  Springfield  most  of  his  life,  and 
who  served  his  State  as  Governor  and  for  several 
terms  as  United  States  Senator,  said,  in  contradiction 
of  the  report  that  Lincoln  drank : 

Lincoln  never  drank,  smoked,  or  chewed  tobacco,  or 
swore.  He  was  a  man  of  the  most  simple  habits.  I  re 
call  distinctly  when  a  committee  of  Springfield  citizens, 
including  myself,  called  at  Lincoln's  house,  after  he  was 
nominated  for  President,  to  talk  over  with  him  the  ar 
rangements  for  receiving  the  committee  on  notification. 
Lincoln  said :  "Boys,  I  never  had  a  drop  of  liquor  in 
my  whole  life,  and  I  don't  want  to  begin  now."  6 

Concerning  the  historic  occasion  when  Lincoln  re 
ceived  official  notice  of  his  nomination  for  the  Presi- 
6  Chicago  Record-Herald,  March  16,  1908. 


52  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

dency  by  the  Chicago  convention,  we  have  a  great  va 
riety  of  testimony,  differing  in  some  minor  points, 
but  all  agreeing  in  the  fact  that  he  declined  to  provide 
liquors  for  the  entertainment  of  the  committee.  Car 
penter,  who  painted  the  picture  of  Lincoln  and  his 
cabinet,  gives  the  following  report  of  what  took  place 
at  the  meeting: 

After  the  ceremony  had  passed  [the  notification  and 
Lincoln's  reply],  Mr.  Lincoln  remarked  to  the  company 
that  as  an  appropriate  conclusion  to  an  interview  so  im 
portant  and  interesting  as  that  which  had  just  trans 
pired,  he  supposed  good  manners  would  require  that  he 
should  treat  the  committee  with  something  to  drink,  and, 
opening  a  door  that  led  into  a  room  in  the  rear,  he  called 
out,  "Mary !  Mary !"  A  girl  replied  to  the  call,  to  whom 
Mr.  Lincoln  spoke  a  few  words  in  an  undertone,  and, 
closing  the  door,  he  returned  again  to  converse  with  his 
guests.  In  a  few  minutes  the  maid  entered,  bearing 
several  glass  tumblers  and  a  large  pitcher  in  the  midst, 
and  placed  them  upon  the  center-table.  Mr.  Lincoln 
arose,  and,  gravely  addressing  the  company,  said :  "Gen 
tlemen,  we  must  pledge  our  mutual  healths  in  the  most 
healthy  beverage  which  God  has  given  to  men.  It  is  the 
only  beverage  I  have  ever  used  or  allowed  in  my  family, 
and  I  cannot  consistently  depart  from  it  on  the  present 
occasion.  It  is  pure  Adam's  ale  from  the  spring."  And, 
taking  the  tumbler,  he  touched  it  to  his  lips  and  pledged 
them  his  highest  respects  in  a  cup  of  cold  water.  Of 
course  all  his  guests  were  constrained  to  admire  his  con 
sistency  and  to  join  in  his  example.7 

7  "Six  Months  in  the  White  House,"  p.  125. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  53 

Charles  Carleton  Coffin,  who  was  present  at  the 
ceremony,  says  that  after  responding  to  the  formal 
notification,  Lincoln  said : 

Mrs.  Lincoln  will  be  pleased  to  see  you,  gentlemen. 
You  will  find  her  in  the  other  room.  You  must  be 
thirsty  after  your  long  ride.  You  will  find  a  pitcher  of 
water  in  the  library. 

Entering  the  library,  they  found  "a  plain  table  with 
writing-materials  upon  it,  a  pitcher  of  cold  water  and 
glasses,  but  no  wines  or  liquors."  Mr.  Coffin  also  re 
ports  that  a  citizen  of  Springfield  told  him  that  sev 
eral  citizens  called  on  Mr.  Lincoln  and  suggested  to 
him  that  some  entertainment  should  be  provided,  of 
fering  at  the  same  time  to  supply  the  needful  liquors. 
Mr.  Lincoln  replied: 

Gentlemen,  I  thank  you  for  your  kind  intentions,  but 
must  respectfully  decline  your  offer.  I  have  no  liquor 
in  my  house  and  have  never  been  in  the  habit  of  enter 
taining  my  friends  in  that  way.  I  cannot  permit  my 
friends  to  do  for  me  what  I  will  not  myself  do.  I  shall 
provide  cold  water — nothing  else.8 

Lincoln's  letter  to  J.  Mason  Haight,  of  California, 
who  made  inquiry  about  the  serving  of  liquors,  is  clear 
and  conclusive.  Shortly  after  Mr.  Lincoln's  formal 
notification,  as  above  recited,  Mr.  Haight  wrote  Lin 
coln  a  letter  wishing  to  know  whether  liquors  were  or 
were  not  served  on  that  occasion.  In  reply  he  re 
ceived  the  following : 

8  Charles  Carleton  Coffin,  ''Reminiscences  of  Abraham  Lin 
coln,"  p.  174. 


54  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

Private  and  Confidential. 

SPRINGFIELD,  ILL.,  JUNE  n,  1860. 
J.  MASON  HAIGHT,  ESQ. 
MY  DEAR  SIR  : 

I  think  it  would  be  improper  for  me  to  write  or  say 
anything  to  or  for  the  public,  upon  the  subject  of  which 
you  inquire.  I  therefore  wish  the  little  I  do  write  to  be 
held  as  strictly  confidential.  Having  kept  house  sixteen 
years  and  having  never  held  the  cup  to  the  lips  of  my 
friends  there,  my  judgment  was  that  I  should  not,  in  my 
new  position,  change  my  habit  in  this  respect.  What 
actually  occurred  upon  the  occasion  of  the  committee  vis 
iting  me  I  think  it  would  be  better  for  others  to  say. 
Yours  respectfully, 

A  LINCOLN. 

Lieutenant-Governor  Koerner,  a  noted  enemy  of 
prohibition,  but  a  friend  of  Lincoln,  was  at  the  noti 
fication  meeting.  His  reference  to  the  absence  of 
liquor  is  rather  amusing.  He  said :  "Ice  water,  it 
being  a  very  hot  evening,  was  the  only  refreshment 
served.'  9 

Robert  J.  Halle,  editor  of  the  liquor  paper,  Cham 
pion  of  Fair  Play,  makes  special  criticism  of  John 
Hay's  letter  of  November  24,  1894,  and  questions  its 
genuineness,  saying: 

The  letter  is  most  cunningly  worded,  and,  even  if 
genuine,  is  very  inconclusive;  the  letter  is  undated  and 
the  name  of  the  person  to  whom  it  is  supposed  to  have 
been  sent  carefully  omitted;  it  makes  reference  to  only 
one  kind  of  alcoholic  beverage,  viz.,  whiskey. 

9  "Life  of  Koerner,"  Vol.  II,  p.  94. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  55 

Mr.  Halle  asks  why  the  name  of  only  one  liquor  is 
mentioned,  and  concludes:  "The  natural  inference  is 
that  Lincoln  drank  some  of  the  other  kinds,  to  his  pri 
vate  secretary's  knowledge/' 

In  the  letter  to  Mr.  Hay,  to  which  he  replied,  he 
was  asked  explicitly  about  the  claim  of  the  man  who 
said  Mr.  Lincoln  "drank  whiskey."  The  facsimile 
of  Mr.  Hay's  letter  has  been  widely  published,  and  no 
one  familiar  with  his  handwriting  ever  challenged  the 
genuineness  of  the  document. 

The  most  pitiful  attempt  the  liquor  men  have  made 
to  try  to  prove  that  Lincoln  used  liquor  as  a  beverage 
is  their  publication  in  fac-simile  of  a  page  in  the  ledger 
of  the  Spring-field  drugstore  of  Corneau  &  Diller,  which 
shows  that  during  a  number  of  months  several  charges 
\vere  made  for  brandy.10  R.  W.  Diller,  who  was  one 
of  Lincoln's  intimate  friends,  denounced  with  indig 
nation  the  stories  that  Lincoln  drank.11 

10  Robert  J.  Halle,  the  editor  of  the  Chicago  Liquor  paper, 
The  Champion  of  Fair  Play,  is  the  author  of  a  pamphlet  en 
titled  ''Lincoln  and  the  Liquor  Question,"  published  by  the  Lit 
erary  Bureau  of  the  National  Liquor  League  of  America.  It 
repeats  all  the  stories  and  rumors  as  to  Lincoln's  being  a  saloon 
keeper  and  a  liquor  drinker,  gives  a  picture  of  the  building  "in 
which  Lincoln  kept  a  saloon,"  a  facsimile  of  the  so-called  saloon 
license,  and  the  drug  store  account  of  Corneau  &  Diller. 

Mr.  Halle  also  quotes  three  times  the  statement  that  Lincoln 
declared  the  injury  done  by  liquor  "did  not  arise  from  the  use 
of  a  bad  thing,  but  the  abuse  of  a  very  good  thing."  This  is  a 
perversion  of  Lincoln's  words.  He  was  speaking  of  public  opin 
ion  on  the  use  of  liquor,  and  it  was  acknowledged  many  were 
greatly  injured  by  it,  "but  none  seemed  to  think  that  the  injury 
arose  from  the  use  of  a  bad  thing,  but  from  the  abuse  of  a  very 
good  thing."  He  is  stating  the  popular  opinion  on  the  subject; 
and  to  say  he  declared  that  "liquor  was  a  good  thing,"  as  his 
personal  opinion,  is  untrue. 

11 1.   R.  Diller,   Letter. 


56  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

There  are  a  number  of  well  authenticated  incidents 
which  illustrate  Lincoln's  habits  of  abstinence.  Mr. 
Herndon  relates  that  Lincoln  told  many  times  the  fol 
lowing  story: 

He  was  traveling  in  a  stage  coach,  the  only  other 
passenger  being  a  Kentuckian,  who  offered  him  a  chew 
of  tobacco  and  was  answered : 

"No,  I  thank  you,  I  never  chew." 

Later  on  the  fellow-traveler  offered  a  cigar,  which 
was  also  politely  declined,  on  the  ground  that  he  never 
smoked.  As  the  coach  stopped  at  the  station  to 
change  horses,  the  Kentuckian  poured  out  a  cup  of 
brandy  and  said : 

"Stranger,  seeing  you  do  not  smoke  or  chew,  per 
haps  you  will  take  a  little  of  this  fine  French  brandy. 
It's  a  fine  article  and  a  good  appetizer." 

This  last  best  evidence  of  hospitality  was  also  de 
clined  by  Lincoln ;  and  when  the  two  separated  the  man 
said: 

"Stranger,  you  are  a  clever  but  strange  companion. 
I  may  never  see  you  again,  and  don't  want  to  offend 
you,  but  my  experience  has  taught  me  that  a  man  who 
has  no  vices  has  blamed  few  virtues."  12 

The  stories  of  Lincoln's  drinking  are  all  traceable 
to  unreliable  sources.  As  an  illustration,  there  was 
published  in  a  Chicago  paper  in  1908  the  following: 

L.  White  Busbey,  secretary  to  Speaker  Cannon,  said 
that  he  recalled  that  an  old  citizen  of  Illinois  once  told 

12  Herndon  and  Weik,  Vol.  I,  p.  302. 

A  revised  version  of  the  story  gives  these  as  the  questions: 
"Stranger,  do  you  masticate, — do  you  fumigate, — do  you  irri 
gate  ?" 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  57 

him  that  Lincoln  sold  whiskey  when  he  was  a  country 
storekeeper.  'This  old  man  lived  in  the  town  where 
Lincoln  kept  store  and  Stephen  A.  Douglas  taught 
school,"  said  Mr.  Busbey.  "He  told  me  that  at  the  end 
of  every  school  term  Lincoln  had  a  slate  full  of  credits 
against  Douglas.  The  barrel  was  empty  and  Lincoln 
was  broke." 


In  the  Lincoln-Douglas  debates  Douglas  referred  to 
Lincoln  as  a  former  grocery-storekeeper.  Lincoln  re 
plied  : 

"Yes,  I  was  selling  goods  behind  the  counter,  and 
Mr.  Douglas  was  drinking  before  it." 

This  passage-at-arms  as  to  selling  and  buying  com 
prised  the  only  pleasantries  of  the  debate.  History 
proves  that  Lincoln  and  Douglas  never  met  until  1834, 
and  then  at  Vandalia.  Lincoln  was  then  a  member  of 
the  Legislature,  while  Douglas,  who  was  four  years 
Lincoln's  junior,  was  a  candidate  for  State's  Attor 
ney.  The  New  Salem  store  had  "winked  out"  long 
before  that  meeting. 

One  of  the  oldest  and  most  intimate  friends  of  Lin 
coln  was  Dr.  William  Jayne,  of  Springfield.  His  sis 
ter  became  the  wife  of  Senator  Lyman  Trumbull,  and 
was  the  bridesmaid  at  the  Lincoln  wedding.  Dr. 
Jayne  was  the  first  Governor  of  the  Territory  of  Da 
kota  by  the  appointment  of  President  Lincoln.  Paul 
Selby,  a  pioneer  editor  and  friend  of  Lincoln,  said  in 
1908  that  Dr.  Jayne  was  one  of  the  few  persons  then 
living  "who  knew  Lincoln  intimately  and  were  accus 
tomed  to  meet  him  almost  daily  in  private  life  and 
frequently  enjoyed  the  hospitality  of  his  home." 


58  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

In  a  letter  to  Mr.  Selby,  Dr.  Jayne  made  the  fol 
lowing  statement: 

I  first  knew  Mr.  Lincoln  more  than  seventy  years  ago 
— quite  well  after  he  came  to  Springfield  in  1837.  ^e 
boarded  with  William  Butler  (in  1859  to  1862  State 
Treasurer),  the  second  house  west  of  my  father's  home, 
from  the  time  he  came  to  Springfield  until  he  married. 
My  father  first  and  I  afterward  were  Butler's  family 
physicians.  I  think  I  knew  Mr.  Lincoln  as  well  as  any 
man  now  living  in  our  city  except  John  W.  Bunn,  who 
politically  knew  Mr.  Lincoln  very  intimately.  I  do  not 
believe  Lincoln  ever  drank  wine  or  whiskey  after  he  came 
to  our  city  to  live.  What  he  may  have  done  prior  to 
coming  to  our  city  I  do  not  know.  He  joined  the  Wash- 
ingtonian  Temperance  Society,  made  a  temperance 
speech  oii  February  22,  1842,  and  I  have  a  copy  of  that 
speech.  Mr.  Lincoln  never  served  wine  to  any  one  in 
his  home  while  he  was  in  Springfield.  What  he  may 
have  done  in  the  White  House  I  do  not  know.  I  have 
dined  with  him  in  the  White  House,  and  certainly  he  had 
then  no  wine.  My  opinion  is  that  he  never  drank  any 
spirits  in  youth.  Of  his  early  years,  of  course,  I  cannot 
speak  with  knowledge. 

In  an  interview  Dr.  Jayne  said  further: 

One  could  with  safety  wager  any  sum  that  no  man  in 
Springfield  ever  saw  Lincoln  take  a  drink.  When  the 
committee  came  to  notify  him  of  his  nomination,  a  friend 
sent  him  a  quantity  of  liquor,  but  he  refused  to  serve  it 
himself  or  to  permit  Mrs.  Lincoln  to  do  so.  He  said  he 
never  had  offered  drink  to  any  one  and  he  did  not  intend 
to  begin  then. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  59 

General  John  Cook  was  Colonel  of  the  first  regi 
ment  mustered  into  service  from  the  State,  the  Sev 
enth  Illinois.  He  was  appointed  Brigadier  General 
by  President  Lincoln  for  meritorious  services  at  Fort 
Donelson.  In  a  letter  to  Mr.  Selby,  General  Cook 
says : 

My  acquaintance  with  Mr.  Lincoln  began  about  1840, 
or  a  little  before,  and  from  that  time  until  the  assassina 
tion  the  friendship  shown  me  never  relaxed.  The  story 
of  Mr.  Lincoln's  keeping  bar  or  tending  a  saloon  (called 
a  grocery  in  early  days)  is  purely  bosh,  and  the  assertion 
that  he  was  addicted  to  the  use  of  liquors  of  any  descrip 
tion  whatever  is  a  dastardly  calumny.  I  never  knew  him 
to  take  even  a  social  drink  with  any  one,  and  I  never  knew 
him  to  enter  a  saloon  for  any  purpose.  Without  ostenta 
tion  he  was  ever  the  champion  of  a  total  abstinence. 

Speaking  of  a  visit  to  Washington  after  Lincoln's 
first  inauguration,  during  which  time  he  was  a  guest 
at  the  White  House  for  some  three  weeks,  General 
Cook  says: 

I  sat  at  the  family  table  and  on  suitable  occasions  was 
permitted  to  be  present  at  different  functions.  During 
all  of  such  occasions,  as  has  been  the  custom  from  time 
immemorial,  wine  was  ever  present,  but  on  no  occasion 
did  I  see  Mr.  Lincoln  raise  the  glass  to  his  lips.13 

Stephen  A.  Douglas  once  attempted  to  ridicule  Mr. 
Lincoln's  abstaining  habit  and  asked  sneeringly : 
"What!  are  you  a  temperance  man?" 

13  Paul  Selby,  "Stories  and  Speeches  of  Abraham  Lincoln." 


60  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

"No,"  drawled  Lincoln,  with  a  smile,  "I'm  not  a 
temperance  man,  but  I'm  temperate  in  this — I  don't 
drink."  14 

General  Horace  Porter  relates  that  at  one  time  Lin 
coln  came  to  City  Point  on  a  steamboat  to  visit  Gen 
eral  Grant,  and,  after  giving  his  greetings  and  saying 
complimentary  things  about  the  hard  work  of  the 
winter's  siege,  mentioned  that  he  was  not  feeling  well 
because  he  had  been  badly  shaken  up  on  the  boat.  A 
staff  officer  suggested : 

"Let  me  send  for  a  bottle  of  champagne  for  you, 
Mr.  President;  that's  the  best  remedy  I  know  of  for 
seasickness." 

"No,  no,  my  young  friend,"  replied  the  President, 
"I've  seen  many  a  man  in  my  time  seasick  ashore  from 
drinking  that  very  article." 

"That  was  the  last  time,"  General  Porter  adds,  "that 
any  one  screwed  up  sufficient  courage  to  offer  him 
wine."  15 

14  Frederick  Trevor  Hill,  "Lincoln  the  Lawyer,"  p.  33. 
"General  Horace  Porter,  Century  Magazine,  October,  1885. 


CHAPTER  IV 

LINCOLN   AS  A  TEMPERANCE  REFORMER 

The  name  of  Abraham  Lincoln  stands  first  and  fore 
most  in  the  story  of  the  abolition  of  human  slavery, 
and  yet  Lincoln  was  not,  in  a  strict  sense  of  the  word, 
an  abolitionist  until  he  faced  the  question  of  emanci 
pation  as  a  war  measure.  He  hated  slavery  because 
he  believed  it  to  be  cruel  and  unjust.  "If  slavery  is 
not  wrong,  nothing  is  wrong,"  were  his  words.  Ac 
cording  to  Herndon,  Lincoln  looked  upon  slavery, 
temperance,  and  universal  suffrage  as  the  great  ques 
tions  of  moral  and  social  reform,  and  early  made  this 
declaration. 

"All  such  questions,"  he  observed  one  day  to  Hern 
don,  as  they  were  discussing  temperance  in  their  of 
fice,  "must  first  find  lodgment  with  the  most  enlight 
ened  souls  who  stamp  them  with  their  approval.  In 
God's  own  time  they  will  be  organized  into  law,  and 
thus  woven  into  the  fabric  of  our  institutions."  l 

Heretofore  there  has  been  no  general  recognition 
of  Lincoln's  notable  relation  to  temperance  reform. 
The  facts  are,  howrever,  that  he  not  only  gave  his  per 
sonal  example  by  lifelong  abstinence,  but  he  also  iden 
tified  himself  actively  with  the  first  widespread  popu- 

1  Herndon  and  Weik,  p.  158. 

61 


62  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

lar  movement  to  advance  the  temperance  cause.  In 
the  Washingtonian  movement  he  not  only  gave  his 
public  example  by  taking  the  pledge,  but  he  made  a 
personal  canvass,  spoke  on  many  occasions,  and  as  a 
climax  he  delivered  in  behalf  of  the  reform  a  great 
address,  which  is  a  classic. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  most  of  Lincoln's  tem 
perance  speeches  were  delivered  in  obscure  places  be 
fore  he  became  a  man  of  prominnce  and  when  his 
views  upon  public  questions  were  not  regarded  as  of 
special  value. 

The  temperance  reformation  O'f  which  the  modern 
movement  is  a  continuance  began  in  an  effective  and 
organized  way  in  i825.2  At  the  close  of  the  Revolu 
tion  the  evils  of  intemperance  were  greatly  increased. 
The  one  name  to  be  specially  honored  in  the  awak 
ening  of  the  American  people  is  that  of  Dr.  Benjamin 
Rush  of  Philadelphia.  He  was  the  most  distinguished 
physician  of  the  country,  and  had  also  a  large  place 
in  connection  with  the  independence  of  the  Colonies. 
As  a  member  of  the  Continental  Congress  of  1776  he 
was  one  of  the  signers  of  the  Declaration^  of  Inde 
pendence  and  a  member  of  the  Constitutional  Con 
vention  of  1787.  He  was  a  leading  advocate  of  free 
schools  and  of  the  education  of  women,  and  was  one 
of  the  founders  of  the  first  anti-slavery  society,  organ 
ized  in  1775. 

This  distinguished  American,  holding  medals  and 
honors  from  European  sources  and  recognized  as  a 
leader  in  humanitarian  movements,  published  in  1785 
2  "Temperance  Progress,"  Wooley  and  Johnson,  p.  56. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  63 

his  "Inquiry  into  the  Effects  of  Ardent  Spirits  on  the 
Human  Body  and  Mind."  It  was  a  remarkable  docu 
ment  and  gives  forcible  statements  of  the  evils  of  drink 
that  are  still  effective.  His  arguments,  however,  were 
against  distilled  liquors. 

In  1811,  Dr.  Rush  presented  to  the  General  Assem 
bly  of  the  Presbyterian  Church,  convened  in  Philadel 
phia,  a  thousand  copies  of  his  essay  and  made  an  ear 
nest  appeal  for  some  action  by  the  Assembly.  As  a 
result,  a  committee  was  appointed  that  in  1812  re 
ported  strongly  against  intemperance,  yet  did  not  de 
clare  for  total  abstinence.  Committees  of  conference 
with  other  denominations  were  appointed,  and  during 
that  year  action  was  taken  by  the  Methodist  and  Con 
gregational  Churches,  which  marked  the  beginning  of 
the  persistent  \vork  of  the  churches  against  intem 
perance. 

In  1825  the  Reverend  Lyman  Beecher  preached  his 
six  sermons  on  the  "Nature,  Occasions,  Signs,  Evils, 
and  Remedy  of  Intemperance."  The  publication  of 
these  sermons,  which  were  translated  into  several  lan 
guages  and  widely  circulated  among  other  nations, 
was  considered  the  greatest  influence  in  creating  a  dis 
tinct  sentiment  against  not  only  the  use  of  liquor  but 
also  the  traffic  itself.3 

In  1826  The  American  Society  for  the  Promotion 
of  Temperance  was  formed.  This  was  the  beginning 
of  a  new  era,  in  that  the  declaration  was  made  that 
the  only  practical  and  effective  remedy  for  intemper 
ance  was  total  abstinence.  In  the  church  of  Rev. 
3  "Sermons,"  Lyman  Beecher. 


64  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

Albert  Barnes  at  Morristown  there  was  a  society  that 
pledged  its  members  not  to  drink  more  than  a  pint  of 
applejack  a  day  as  against  the  usual  allowance  of  a 
quart. 

In  1836  the  American  Temperance  Union  was  or 
ganized  at  a  convention  in  Saratoga  and  took  the  ad 
vanced  step  of  extending  to  all  intoxicating  liquors 
the  principle  of  total  abstinence. 

The  next  important  advance  in  temperance  reform 
was  the  Washingtonian  movement,  beginning  in  1840. 
Later,  in  1849,  Father  Mathew,  the  great  Irish  apostle 
of  temperance,  visited  the  United  States,  held  great 
meetings  in  all  parts  of  the  country,  and  administered 
the  pledge  to  some  600,000  people.  Then  followed 
the  organization  of  the  temperance  fraternal  societies, 
to  preserve  the  fruits  of  the  previous  agitations.  The 
first  of  these  was  the  Sons  of  Temperance,  organized 
in  1842,  followed  by  the  Good  Templars  in  1851.  The 
Congressional  Temperance  total  abstinence  society  was 
formed  in  1842,  and  added  much  prestige  to  the  move 
ment. 

The  first  prohibitory  law  was  passed  in  Maine  in 
1846.  The  liquor  men  made  an  effort  to  have  all  re 
strictive  measures  as  to  the  sale  of  liquor  removed. 
Suits  were  carried  to  the  United  States  Supreme  Court 
from  several  States.  The  argument  for  this  appeal 
was  made  by  Daniel  Webster  and  Rufus  Choate.  In 
handing  down  his  decision  on  the  case,  in  1847,  Chief 
Justice  Taney,  noted  for  his  Dred  Scott  pro-slavery 
decision,  said : 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  65 

If  any  State  deems  the  retail  and  internal  traffic  in 
ardent  spirits  injurious  to  its  citizens  and  calculated  to 
produce  illness,  vice,  and  debauchery,  I  see  nothing  in  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  to  prevent  it  from 
regulating  and  restraining  the  traffic  or  from  prohibiting 
it  altogether  if  it  thinks  proper. 


The  National  Temperance  Society  and  Publication 
Llouse  was  founded  in  1865,  and  for  many  years  led 
the  temperance  movements  of  the  country.  In  1874 
was  organized  the  Woman's  Christian  Temperance 
Union,  the  largest  and  in  many  ways  the  most  power 
ful  organization  in  behalf  of  temperance  reform.  In 
later  days  came  the  pledge-signing  total  abstinence 
crusades,  the  organization  of  church  boards  and  socie 
ties,  the  Prohibition  Political  Party,  and  the  great 
Anti-Saloon  League.  One  of  the  important  results  of 
all  these  movements  is  that  at  this  time  (1918)  twenty 
States  have  voted  to  ratify  the  prohibition  amendment 
to  the  Constitution. 

In  the  days  of  Lincoln's  special  activity  in  temper 
ance  work  intense  interest  on  the  slavery  question 
crowded  out  other  reforms.  It  is  apparent,  however, 
that  the  temperance  reform  was  a  close  second  in  Lin 
coln's  heart  to  abolition.  It  may  be  that  the  delay  of 
the  triumph  over  alcohol  required  the  time  of  the  last 
half-century,  because  it  was  needful  to  add  to  the  moral 
sentiment  against  drink  the  powerful  arguments  of 
science,  of  physical  and  mental  efficiency,  and  the  com 
ing  together  of  social  influences. 


66  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

The  Washingtonian  Society  was  founded  in  the 
barroom  of  a  Baltimore  hotel  in  1840  by  six  members 
of  a  drinking  club.  One  of  these  was  by  vocation  a 
tailor,  another  a  carpenter,  while  there  were  two 
blacksmiths,  a  coachmaker,  and  a  silversmith.  Rev. 
Matthew  Hale  Smith  was  then  making  temperance  ad 
dresses  in  the  city,  and  some  members  of  the  club 
were  sent  to  hear  one  of  his  lectures  and  report.  In 
giving  the  account,  one  said  that  temperance  was  all 
right.  The  tavern-keeper,  who  was  a  listener,  in 
sisted  that  the  temperance  people  were  hypocrites. 
This  provoked  the  reply : 

"It  is  to  your  interest  to  cry  them  down." 
It  was  finally  proposed  to  form  a  society,  the  fol 
lowing  pledge  being  prepared  and  signed : 

We,  whose  names  are  annexed,  desirous  of  forming  a 
society  for  our  mutual  benefit  and  to  guard  against  a 
practice — a  pernicious  practice — which  is  injurious  to  our 
health,  standing,  and  families,  do  pledge  ourselves  as 
gentlemen  that  we  will  not  drink  any  spirits  or  malt  liq 
uors,  wine,  or  cider. 

In  a  few  months  they  had  seven  hundred  members. 
John  H.  W.  Hawkins,  who  had  been  a  confirmed 
drunkard,  became  their  leader  and  a  powerful  advo 
cate  of  the  cause.  He  ultimately  carried  the  crusade 
to  almost  every  State  in  the  Union,  making  two  visits 
to  Springfield,  Illinois. 

Dr.  Theodore  L.  Cuyler  says  in  his  account  of  the 
pioneer  leaders  of  the  temperance  cause : 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  67 

The  greatest  single  result  of  this  movement  was  the 
conversion  of  John  B.  Gough  from  an  obscure  and 
wretched  young  sot  into  the  most  brilliant,  popular  and 
effective  advocate  of  our  cause  that  the  world  has  yet 
seen. 

Dr.  Cuyler  says  further : 

The  last  name  I  record  is  the  most  illustrious  of  them 
all — the  name  of  him  who  in  early  life  defended  the  prin 
ciples  of  total  abstinence  and  who  closed  his  glorious  ca 
reer  by  binding  up  the  Union  and  by  unbinding  the 
manacles  of  the  slave — the  name  of  our  country's  best 
beloved,  Abraham  Lincoln.4 

The  Washingtonian  movement  swept  over  the  coun 
try  like  wildfire.  Popular  meetings  were  held  in 
school-houses,  halls,  and  churches.  Many  of  the 
speakers  were  reformed  drunkards  who  had  taken  the 
pledge  and  related  their  experiences. 

The  experience  of  John  B.  Gough,  as  related  by 
himself  in  his  "Autobiography,"  may  illustrate  the 
methods  of  the  meetings.  Gough  had  gone  to  the 
lowest  depth  of  poverty  and  wretchedness,  and  when 
he  was  in  despair  and  ready  for  suicide  he  was  invited 
to  one  of  the  meetings  by  Joel  Stratton,  a  waiter. 
This  is  his  own  account: 

When  I  stood  up  to  relate  my  story,  I  recognized  my 
acquaintance  who  asked  me  to  sign.  He  greeted  me  with 
a  smile  of  approbation  which  nerved  and  strengthened 

4  Cuyler,  "Temperance  in  All  Nations,"  Vol.  i,  p.  21. 


68  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

me  for  my  task  as  I  tremblingly  observed  every  eye  fixed 
upon  me.  I  lifted  my  quivering  hand  and  then  and  there 
told  what  rum  had  done  for  me.  I  related  that  I  had 
once  been  respectable  and  happy  and  had  a  home,  but 
that  now  I  was  a  homeless,  miserable,  scathed,  diseased, 
and  blighted  outcast  from  society.  I  said  scarce  a  hope 
remained  to  me  of  ever  becoming  that  which  I  once  was, 
but,  having  promised  to  sign  the  pledge,  I  had  determined 
not  to  break  my  word  and  would  now  affix  my  name  to 
it.  In  my  palsied  hand  I  with  difficulty  grasped  the  pen, 
and  in  characters  almost  as  crooked  as  those  of  old 
Stephen  Hopkins  on  the  Declaration  of  Independence  I 
signed  the  total  abstinence  pledge  and  resolved  to  free 
myself  from  the  inexorable  tyrant  Rum.5 

Dickens'  first  visit  to  America  was  in  1842,  the  year 
when  the  Washingtonian  movement  was  at  its  height 
and  the  year  in  which  Lincoln  delivered  his  notable  ad 
dress  on  Washington's  birthday.  We  find  records  of 
Dickens'  journeys  across  the  country  in  coaches.  In 
one  hotel  he  ate  with  the  boarders,  and  they  had  no 
drink  but  tea  and  coffee. 

I  ask  for  brandy,  but  it  is  a  temperance  hotel  and  spir 
its  are  not  to  be  had  for  love  or  money. 

On  visiting  the  Military  Academy  at  West  Point, 
he  writes  of  the  hotel  that  "it  had  the  drawback  of  be 
ing  a  total  abstinence  house,"  as  wines  and  liquors  were 
forbidden  to  the  cadets. 

On  his  visit  to  Cincinnati  he  wrote  of  a  great  tem- 

0  "Autobiography  of  John  B.  Gough,"  p.  131. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  69 

perance  convention  held  there  on  the  day  after  his  ar 
rival,  the  parade  passing  the  hotel  in  which  he  lodged : 

It  comprised  several  thousand  men,  the  members  of 
various  Washingtonian  auxiliary  temperance  societies, 
and  was  marshaled  by  officers  on  horseback  who  cantered 
briskly  up  and  down  the  line  with  scarfs  and  ribbons  of 
bright  colors  fluttering  out  behind  them  gaily.  ...  I  was 
particularly  pleased  to  see  the  Irishmen  who  formed  a 
distinct  society  among  themselves,  and  mustered  very 
strong  with  their  green  scarfs — carrying  their  national 
Harp  and  their  portrait  of  Father  Mathew  high  above 
their  heads.  They  looked  as  jolly  and  good-humored 
as  ever,  and  working  here  the  hardest  for  their  living 
and  doing  any  kind  of  sturdy  labor  that  came  in  their 
way,  were  the  most  independent  fellows  there,  I  thought. 

The  banners  were  very  well  painted  and  flaunted  down 
the  street  famously.  There  was  the  smiting  of  the  rock, 
the  gushing  forth  of  the  waters ;  and  there  a  temperate 
man  with  "considerable  of  a  hatchet"  (as  the  standard 
bearer  would  probably  have  said)  aiming  a  deadly  blow 
at  a  serpent  which  was  apparently  about  to  spring  upon 
him  from  the  top  of  a  barrel  of  spirits.  But  the  chief 
feature  of  this  part  of  the  show  was  a  huge  allegorical  de 
vice,  borne  among  the  ship-carpenters,  on  one  side 
whereof  the  steamboat  Alcohol  was  represented  bursting 
her  boiler  and  exploding  with  a  great  crash,  while  upon 
the  other,  the  good  ship  Temperance  sailed  away  with  a 
fair  wind  to  the  hearts'  content  of  the  Captain,  crew  and 
passengers. 

Dickens  also  writes  of  the  temperance  songs  of  the 
children  of  the  free  schools,  and  the  speeches  adapted 
to  the  occasion,  "but  the  main  thing  was  the  conduct 


70  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

and  appearance  of  the  audience  throughout  the  day, 
and  that  was  admirable  and  full  of  promise."  6 

An  examination  of  the  newspaper  files  of  that  time 
shows  that  little  space  was  given  to  reports  of  meet 
ings  or  speeches  unless  they  were  related  to  immedi 
ate  political  events;  but  it  is  known  that  Lincoln  be 
came  interested  in  the  Washingtonian  movement  and 
made  many  speeches  in  Springfield  and  throughout 
the  adjoining  country,  advocating  total  abstinence  and 
the  signing  of  the  pledge. 

Roland  Diller,  a  longtime  resident  of  Springfield, 
was  an  intimate  personal  friend  of  Lincoln  from  1844 
to  the  end  of  his  life.  His  drugstore  was  not  far  from 
the  Lincoln  home  and  was  one  of  the  favorite  haunts 
of  Lincoln  and  a  number  of  his  friends,  who  fre 
quently  gathered  there  to  tell  stories  and  discuss  poli 
tics.7  " 

Dr.  Howard  Russell,  founder  of  the  Anti-Saloon 
League,  was  in  Springfield  early  in  1900  and  visited 
Mr.  Diller,  to  look  at  some  relics  of  the  great  Presi 
dent.  He  said  that  he  was  specially  interested  in  tem 
perance  work;  whereupon  the  old  druggist  told  him 
that  Lincoln  was  a  pronounced  temperance  man  and 

6  Dickens,   "American   Notes,"  p.    173;    Nelson  and   Sons. 

7  Letter    of    Isaac    R.    Diller:      "I    never    saw    my    father    so 
righteously  indignant  as   when  he   read   the   statement  by  some 
newspaper  man  that  while  Lincoln  was  in  the  White  House  he 
saw  him  pour  out  four  fingers  of  whiskey  in  a  glass  and  drink 
it  off  with  relish.     Father  said  it  was  as  black  a  lie  as  was  ever 
uttered.     He  said  Mr.  Lincoln  never  drank  with  the  other  men 
who  used  to  gather  in  the  store  and  did  much  drinking.     If  he 
drank  at   all   there   would   have   been   no   secrecy  about   it   with 
those  friends  and  associates  who  used  it  without  any  attempt  at 
hiding  what  they  did." 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  71 

not  only  never  used  intoxicating  liquor  of  any  kind 
but  was  also  an  earnest  advocate  of  the  reform.  Mr. 
Diller  further  told  Dr.  Russell  that  there  were  still 
living  people  who  had  attended  the  Washingtonian 
meetings  at  which  Lincoln  spoke  and  who  had  taken 
the  pledge  as  given  by  Mr.  Lincoln. 

Some  months  after  this,  by  arrangement  of  Mr.  Dil 
ler,  Dr.  Russell  met  Cleopas  Breckenridge,  a  farmer 
of  Sangamon  County  and  a  reputable  citizen  of  high 
standing,  who  had  served  in  the  Civil  War  as  a  ser 
geant  in  Company  D  of  the  Thirty-third  Illinois  Vol 
unteer  Infantry.8  Mr.  Breckenridge  remembered  that 
in  the  summer  of  either  1846  or  1847  ne  nad  attended 
a  temperance  meeting  in  the  neighborhood  school- 
house,  at  which  Lincoln  made  the  address  and  gave 
the  pledge  of  total  abstinence. 

Lincoln  had  already  gained  a  reputation  as  a  public 
speaker  and  as  a  rising  young  lawyer,  and  the  notice 
of  his  coming,  said  Breckenridge,  drew  a  large  crowd. 
Lincoln  made  an  earnest  plea  for  total  abstinence. 
When  he  had  finished  his  address  he  took  from  his 
pocket  a  paper  and  said : 

"This  is  what  is  called  the  'Washingtonian  Pledge.' 
Many  thousands  of  people  throughout  the  country 
have  signed  it.  I  have  signed  this  pledge  myself  and 
would  be  glad  to  have  as  many  of  my  neighbors  as  are 
willing  sign  it  with  me." 

Many  signed  it,  including  Breckenridge,  who  was 
then  ten  years  old.  Lincoln  kindly  urged  him  to  take 
the  pledge,  and  when  the  boy  had  given  his  name,  said 
8  "Lincoln  Legion,"  Banks,  p.  30. 


72  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

to  him :  "You  keep  that  pledge,  and  it  will  be  the  best 
act  of  your  life." 

Breckenridge  said  he  had  always  felt  under  a  sol 
emn  obligation  to  keep  the  pledge  Lincoln  had  given 
him,  and  under  many  temptations  in  the  war  and  amid 
other  surroundings  had  never  broken  it,  counting  it 
an  essential  element  in  a  successful  life. 

Breckenridge  further  gave  Dr.  Russell  the  names 
of  others  still  living  who  had  taken  the  pledge  at  the 
hands  of  Lincoln  at  this  meeting  at  South  Fork  school- 
house  in  1847.  Two  of  them,  R.  E.  Berry  and  Moses 
Martin,  gave  accounts  similar  to  that  rendered  by 
Breckenridge,  and  all  three  of  the  men  made  their  af 
fidavits  to  the  facts  as  stated  by  them. 

One  of  these  men  reproduced  the  following  pledge 
as  given  by  Lincoln : 

Whereas,  the  use  of  alcoholic  liquors  as  a  beverage  is 
productive  of  pauperism,  degradation,  and  crime;  and 
believing  it  is  our  duty  to  discourage  that  which  pro 
duces  more  evil  than  good,  we  therefore  pledge  ourselves 
to  abstain  from  the  use  of  intoxicating  liquors  as  a  bev 
erage. 


CHAPTER  V 

LINCOLN    AND    PROHIBITION 

The  most  distinguishing  relation  of  Abraham  Lin 
coln  to  the  temperance  reform  was  on  the  side  of  moral 
suasion,  especially  as  it  was  exemplified  in  the  Wash- 
ingtonian  movement.  He  had  other  relations  to  the 
traffic  which  he  expressed  directly  and  indirectly  a 
number  of  times. 

The  liquor  advocates  have  given  extensive  publicity 
to  Lincoln's  vote  in  the  Illinois  legislature  of  1840  on 
"An  act  to  regulate  tavern  and  grocery  licenses."  In 
the  House  Journal  of  December  19,  1840,  it  is  recorded 
that  Mr.  Murphy,  of  Chicago,  moved  to  strike  out  all 
after  the  enacting  clause  and  to  insert  the  following: 

That  after  the  passage  of  this  act  no  person  shall  be 
licensed  to  sell  vinous  or  spirituous  liquors  in  this  State 
and  that  any  person  who  violates  this  act  by  selling  such 
liquors  shall  be  fined  in  the  sum  of  one  thousand  dol 
lars,  to  be  recovered  before  any  court  having  competent 
jurisdiction. 

It  was  an  apparent  effort  by  a  friend  of  the  liquor 
business  to  make  the  bill  an  object  of  ridicule.  Lin 
coln  moved  to  lay  the  Murphy  amendment  on  the 
table,  and  this  was  carried  by  a  vote  of  seventy-five 

73 


74  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

Yeas  to  eight  Nays.  This  action  has  been  widely 
paraded  as  evidence  that  Mr.  Lincoln  voted  against 
prohibition.  ; 

In  1855  a  prohibitory  law  was  submitted  to  the 
voters  of  Illinois  and  was  defeated.  Herndon,  Lin 
coln's  law  partner,  was  an  ardent  advocate  of  pro 
hibition.  Joseph  Fort  Newton  says: 

Lincoln,  neither  prohibitionist  nor  abolitionist,  held 
aloof,  not  wishing  to  divert  attention  from  the  supreme 
question  of  the  age,  but  Herndon  plunged  into  the  thick 
of  the  fight,  writing  and  speaking  with  all  the  more  zeal 
because  liquor  was  his  personal  enemy.1 

Mr.  Lincoln  may  have  been  politically  neither  pro 
hibitionist  nor  abolitionist,  but  we  know  that  he  hated 
slavery,  and  there  is  every  evidence  that  he  hated  also 
the  liquor  traffic.  Just  as  he  became  the  Great  Eman 
cipator  when  the  right  time  came,  so  he  would  have 
welcomed  the  day,  if  it  might  have  come  to  him,  to 
sign  a  bill  forbidding  forever  the  traffic  in  alcoholic 
liquor. 

Lord  Charnwood  says : 

His  social  philosophy,  as  he  expressed  it  to  his  friends 
in  these  days,  was  one  which  contemplated  great  future 
reforms — abolition  of  slavery  and  a  strict  temperance 

1  "Lincoln  and  Herndon,"  p.  77.  Dr.  Newton  adds  respecting 
this  campaign :  "No  offices  were  at  stake,  and  there  was  not  a 
full  vote,  but  the  Germans  turned  out  to  a  man — and,  it  was 
charged,  almost  to  a  woman  and  killed  prohibition  in  Illinois 
for  nearly  a  generation."  See  also,  "Memoirs  of  Gustave  Koer- 
ner,"  Vol.  I,  p.  620. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  75 

policy  were  among  them.  But  he  looked  for  them  in  a 
sort  of  fatalistic  confidence  in  the  ultimate  victory  of 
reason  and  saw  no  use  and  a  good  deal  of  harm  in  pre 
mature  political  agitation  for  them.  He  is  reported  to 
have  said :  "All  such  questions  must  find  lodgment  with 
the  most  enlightened  souls  who  stamp  them  with  their 
approval.  In  God's  own  time  they  will  be  organized  into 
law  and  thus  woven  into  the  fabric  of  our  institutions." 
This  seems  a  little  cold-blooded,  but  perhaps  we  can  al 
ready  begin  to  recognize  the  man  who,  when  the  time  had 
fully  come,  would  be  on  the  right  side,  and  in  whom  the 
evil  which  he  had  deeply  but  restrainedly  hated  would 
find  an  appallingly  wary  foe.2 

There  cannot  be  found  in  any  speech  or  letter  of 
Lincoln's  a  single  word  expressing  the  slightest  sym 
pathy  with  the  licensed  traffic  in  liquor.  In  his  great 
address  on  Washington's  birthday  he  said : 

Whether  or  not  the  world  would  be  vastly  benefited  by 
a  total  and  final  banishment  from  it  of  all  intoxicating 
drinks,  seems  to  me  not  now  an  open  question.  Three- 
fourths  of  mankind  confirms  the  affirmative  with  their 
tongues,  and  I  believe  all  the  rest  acknowledge  it  in  their 
hearts. 

He  also  said,  speaking  of  the  temperance  revolu 
tion  : 

When  the  victory  shall  be  complete — when  there  shall 
be  neither  a  slave  nor  a  drunkard  on  the  earth — how 
proud  the  title  of  that  land  which  may  truly  claim  to  be 
the  birthplace  and  the  cradle  of  both  those  revolutions 

2  Lord  Charnwood,  "Abraham  Lincoln,"  p.  75. 


76  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

that  shall  have  ended  in  that  victory.  How  nobly  dis 
tinguished  that  people  who  shall  have  planted  and  nur 
tured  to  maturity  both  the  political  and  moral  freedom 
of  their  species. 

When  Lincoln  refers  to  the  "total  and  final  banish 
ment  of  all  intoxicating  drinks"  he  is  plainly  anticipat 
ing  the  wiping-out  of  the  liquor  traffic.  If  all  men 
were  abstainers  there  would  be  no  reason  for  the  ex 
istence  of  the  traffic.  If  no  intoxicating  liquor  were 
manufactured  or  sold  no  one  would  be  induced  to  form 
the  drink  habit. 

The  friends  of  the  liquor  traffic  have  not  only  re 
sorted  to  misrepresentations  in  their  efforts  to  identify 
Mr.  Lincoln  with  their  business,  but  have  even  used 
forgery.  In  1887,  in  Atlanta,  Georgia,  there  was  an 
exciting  campaign  to  close  the  saloons.  At  that  time 
the  Negroes  were  voting  in  Georgia,  and  it  was 
shrewdly  planned  to  use  the  name  of  Lincoln  to  cap 
ture  their  votes.  Handbills  were  circulated,  headed 
in  large  letters: 

FOR  LIBERTY  !    ABRAHAM  LINCOLN'S  PROCLAMATION. 

Underneath  this  was  a  picture  of  a  Negro  kissing 
the  hand  of  Lincoln,  who-  was  in  the  act  of  striking 
off  his  shackles,  the  Negro's  family  standing  near  by, 
Under  the  picture  was  printed  this  ostensible  quota 
tion: 

Prohibition  will  work  great  injury  to  the  cause  of  tem 
perance.  It  is  a  species  of  intemperance  within  itself, 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  77 

for  it  goes  beyond  the  bounds  of  reason,  in  that  it  at 
tempts  to  control  a  man's  appetite  by  legislation,  and  in 
making  crimes  out  of  things  that  are  not  crimes.  A  pro 
hibitory  law  strikes  a  blow  at  the  very  principles  on 
which  our  government  was  founded.  I  have  always 
been  found  laboring  to  protect  the  weaker  classes  from 
the  stronger,  and  I  can  never  give  my  consent  to  such  a 
law  as  you  propose  to  enact.  Until  my  tongue  t>e  si 
lenced  in  death,  I  will  continue  to  fight  for  the  rights  of 
man. 

Then  followed  this  appeal : 

Colored  voter,  he  appeals  to  you  to  protect  the  liberty 
he  has  bestowed  upon  you.  Will  you  go  back  on  his  ad 
vice  ?  Look  to  your  rights !  Read  and  act !  Vote  for 
the  sale ! 

A  copy  of  this  handbill  was  sent  by  the  writer  of 
these  pages  to  Hay  and  Nicolay.  A  reply  was  re 
ceived  as  follows  from  Hay: 

Neither  Mr.  Nicolay  nor  I  have  ever  come  across  this 
passage  in  Mr.  Lincoln's  works,  which  we  have  been 
several  years  compiling. 

Mr.  Nicolay,  who  spent  years  in  gathering  Lincoln's 
papers,  speeches,  and  writings  of  every  kind,  said: 

In  all  this  vast  collection  there  is  nowhere  any  speech, 
letter  or  document,  or  reported  conversation  by  him  on 
the  subject  of  prohibition. 

In  spite  of  these  statements,  this  forged  quotation 
continues  to  be  used  in  wet-and-dry  campaigns.  A 


78  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

letter  of  inquiry  as  to  its  origin  was  sent  to*  the  Na 
tional  Model  License  League,  of  which  Colonel  T.  M. 
Gilmore  is  president,  eliciting  this  reply : 

As  to  the  reported  words  of  Abraham  Lincoln  begin 
ning  "Prohibition  will  work  great  evil  to  the  cause  of 
temperance,"  I  beg  leave  to  say  that  I  can  not  at  this 
time  tell  you  where  the  original  may  be  found. 

In  another  letter  he  admits  that  after  diligent  search 
through  numerous  authorities  he  could  find  no  evi 
dence  that  Lincoln  ever  used  such  language.3 

A  prominent  liquor  journal  says : 

It  may  be  impossible  to  prove  conclusively  that  Lin 
coln  used  the  exact  words  in  the  disputed  sentence. 

In  1853,  Rev.  James  Smith  in  Springfield  gave  a  lec 
ture  entitled,  "A  Discourse  on  the  Bottle;  Its  Evils 
and  the  Remedy."  On  January  2Qth  a  request  was 
made  by  those  who  heard  it  for  the  publication  of  the 
address,  because  its  general  circulation  would  help  pub 
lic  sentiment,  and  Lincoln  was  one  of  the  signers. 

The  wording  of  this  request  was: 

The  undersigned  listened  with  great  satisfaction  to  the 
discourse,  on  the  subject  of  temperance,  delivered  by 
you  on  last  evening,  and  believing  that  if  published  and 
circulated  among  the  people  it  would  be  productive  of 
good,  we  respectfully  request  a  copy  thereof  for  pub 
lication. 

3  Letters  to  David  G.  Robertson. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  79 

An  extract  from  the  address  is  as  follows : 

The  liquor  traffic  is  a  cancer  in  society,  eating  out  its 
vitals  and  threatening  destruction ;  and  all  attempts  to 
regulate  the  cancer  will  not  only  prove  abortive  but  will 
aggravate  the  evil.  No,  there  must  be  no  more  attempts 
to  regulate  the  cancer;  it  must  be  eradicated;  not  a  root 
must  be  left ;  for  until  this  is  done  all  classes  must  con 
tinue  to  be  exposed  to  become  victims  of  strong  drink, 
and  the  woe  in  the  text  must  abide  upon  us :  "Woe  unto 
him  that  giveth  his  neighbor  drink,  that  putteth  the  bot 
tle  to  him."  The  most  effectual  remedy  would  be  the 
passage  of  a  law  altogether  abolishing  the  liquor  traffic, 
except  for  mechanical,  chemical,  medical,  and  sacramen 
tal  purposes,  and  so  framed  that  no  principle  of  the  con 
stitution  of  the  States  or  of  the  United  States  be  vio 
lated. 

After  Lincoln  had  attained  prominence  as  a  lawyer 
he  was  in  Clinton,  attending  court,  and  made  a  notable 
plea.  A  grogshop  had  badly  demoralized  a  number 
of  men,  and  their  families  had  suffered.  A  company 
of  women,  anticipating  the  work  of  Carrie  Nation  and 
her  hatchet,  had  made  a  raid  on  the  infamous  place, 
had  broken  the  bottles  and  demijohns,  and  smashed 
the  whiskey  barrels  and  the  furniture.  They  were 
arrested  and  prosecuted.  It  is  said  that  the  local  at 
torneys  feared  the  influence  of  the  liquor  men,  but 
Lincoln  volunteered  his  services  in  their  defense. 

The  late  Rev.  Dr.  D.  D.  Thompson,  editor  of  the 
Northwestern  Christian  Advocate,  published  the  fol 
lowing  portion  of  Lincoln's  plea: 


So  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

May  it  please  the  court,  I  will  say  a  few  words  in  be 
half  of  the  women  who  are  arraigned  before  your  Honor 
and  the  jury.  I  would  suggest,  first,  that  there  be  a 
change  in  the  indictment,  so  as  to  have  it  read,  "The 
State  against  Mr.  Whiskey,"  instead  of  "The  State 
against  the  Women."  It  would  be  far  more  appropri 
ate.  Touching  this  question,  there  are  three  laws :  First, 
the  law  of  self-protection ;  second,  the  law  of  the  statute ; 
third,  the  law  of  God.  The  law  of  self-protection  is  the 
law  of  necessity,  as  shown  when  our  fathers  threw  the 
tea  into  Boston  harbor,  and  in  asserting  their  right  to 
life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness.  This  is  the 
defense  of  these  women.  The  man  who  has  persisted  in 
selling  whiskey  has  had  no  regard  for  their  well-being  or 
for  the  welfare  of  their  husbands  and  sons.  He  has  had 
no  fear  of  God  nor  regard  for  man ;  neither  has  he  had 
any  regard  for  the  laws  of  the  statute.  No  jury  can 
fix  any  damages  or  punishment  for  any  violation  of  the 
moral  law.  The  course  pursued  by  this  liquor-dealer  has 
been  for  the  demoralization  of  society.  His  groggery 
has  been  a  nuisance.  These  women,  finding  all  moral 
suasion  of  no  avail  with  this  fellow,  oblivious  to  all  ten 
der  appeals,  alike  regardless  of  their  prayers  and  tears, 
in  order  to  protect  their  households  and  promote  the  wel 
fare  of  the  community,  united  to  suppress  the  nuisance. 
The  good  of  society  demanded  its  suppression.  They 
accomplished  what  otherwise  could  not  have  been  done. 

Henry  B.  Rankin,  in  referring  to  this  case,  says : 

In  the  midst  of  his  powerful  appeals  to  the  jury  in  be 
half  of  the  women,  and  his  attack  upon  the  evils  of  the 
traffic  and  use  of  intoxicating  spirits,  the  speaker  turned, 
and,  pointing  his  long,  bony  finger  toward  the  venerable 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  81 

Parson  Berry,  who  was  among  those  present,  exclaimed : 
"There  stands  the  man  who  years  ago  was  instrumental 
in  convincing  me  of  the  evils  of  trafficking  in  and  using 
ardent  spirits.  I  am  glad  I  ever  saw  him.  I  am  glad 
I  ever  heard  and  heeded  his  testimony  on  this  terrible 
subject."  4 

Herndon  says  that  at  the  close  of  his  plea  "Lincoln 
gave  some  of  his  own  observations  on  the  ruinous  ef 
fects  of  whiskey  in  society  and  demanded  its  early 
suppression." 

At  the  conclusion  of  Lincoln's  speech,  the  court, 
without  waiting  for  the  verdict  of  the  jury,  dismissed 
the  women,  saying: 

"Ladies,  go  home.  I  will  require  no*  bond  of  you, 
and  if  any  fine  is  ever  wanted  o<f  you  we  will  let  you 
know." 

According  to  Herndon,  this  trial  took  place  in  1855, 
which  was  the  year  in  which  a  prohibition  law  w^as 
submitted  to  the  voters  of  Illinois  and  was  defeated.5 

James  B.  Merwin,  founder  of  The  American  Jour 
nal  of  Education  and  widely  known  as  a  writer  and 
speaker  on  educational  and  literary  subjects,  was  also 
among  the  early  advocates  of  prohibition.  He  states 
that  he  and  Lincoln  campaigned  together  for  prohibi 
tion  in  1854  and  1855.  "In  that  memorable  canvass," 
he  says :  "Mr.  Lincoln  and  myself  spoke  in  Jackson 
ville,  Bloomington,  Decatur,  Carlinville,  Peoria  and 
many  other  points."  Richard  Yates,  afterwards  Gov 
ernor  and  United  States  Senator,  presided  at  the  Jack- 

1  "Personal  Recollections,"  Henry  B.  Rankin,  p.  80. 
5  Herndon  and  Weik,  Vol.  II,  p.   12. 


82  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

sonville  meeting.     In  one  of  the  early  speeches  Lin 
coln  made,  Merwin  reports  him  as  saying: 

Is  not  the  law  of  self-protection  the  first  law  of  nature 
—the  first  primary  law  of  civilized  society?  Law  is  for 
the  protection,  conservation  and  extension  of  right  things 
and  of  right  conduct,  not  for  the  protection  of  evil  and 
wrongdoing. 

The  State  must,  in  its  legislative  action,  recognize,  in 
the  law  enacted,  this  principle — it  must  make  sure  and 
secure  these  endeavors  to  establish,  protect,  and  extend 
right  conditions,  right  conduct,  righteousness. 

These  conditions  will  be  secured  and  preserved,  not  by 
indifference,  not  by  a  toleration  of  evils,  not  by  attempt 
ing  to  throw  around  any  evil  the  shield  of  law,  never  by 
any  attempt  to  license  the  evil. 

This  sentiment  of  right  conduct  for  the  protection  of 
home,  of  state,  of  church,  of  individuals,  must  be  taken 
up,  embodied  in  legislation,  and  thus  become  a  positive 
factor  active  in  the  State.  This  is  the  most  important 
function  in  the  legislation  of  the  modern  State. 

This  saves  the  whole,  and  not  a  part,  with  a  high,  true 
conservatism  through  the  united  action  of  all,  by  all,  for 
all. 

The  prohibition  of  the  liquor  traffic,  except  for  medical 
and  mechanical  purposes,  thus  becomes  the  new  evangel 
for  the  safety  and  redemption  of  the  people  from  the 
social,  political,  and  moral  curse  of  the  saloon  and  its 
inevitable  evil  consequences  of  drunkenness. 

According  to  Merwin,  Lincoln  often  said : 
'The  saloon  and  the  liquor  traffic  have  defenders, 
but  no  defense." 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  83 

The  same  authority  also  gives  the  following  as  the 
gist  of  Lincoln's  speeches  in  the  campaign: 

This  legalized  liquor  traffic  as  carried  on  in  the  saloons 
and  grogshops  is  the  tragedy  of  civilization.  Good  citi 
zenship  demands  and  requires  that  what  is  right  should 
not  only  be  made  known,  but  be  made  prevalent;  that 
what  is  evil  should  not  only  be  detected  and  defeated,  but 
destroyed. 

The  saloon  has  proved  itself  to  be  the  greatest  foe,  the 
most  blighting  curse  of  our  modern  civilization,  and  this 
is  why  I  am  a  practical  prohibitionist. 

We  must  not  be  satisfied  until  the  public  sentiment  of 
this  State  and  the  individual  conscience  shall  be  in 
structed  to  look  upon  the  saloonkeeper  and  the  liquor- 
seller,  with  all  the  license  can  give  him,  as  simply  and 
only  a  privileged  malefactor — a  criminal. 

Mr.  Merwin  is  also  authority  for  the  statement  that 
Lincoln,  in  advocating  the  entire  prohibition  of  the 
liquor  traffic,  used  nearly  the  same  language  and  in 
many  instances  the  same  illustrations  he  used  later  in 
his  arguments  against  slavery.6 

8  The  New  Voice,  June  16,  1904. 

James  B.  Merwin  became  acquainted  with  Lincoln  in  1852. 
In  1855,  he  took  an  active  part  in  the  "Maine  Law  Campaign" 
in  Illinois,  as  corresponding  secretary  of  the  committee  in 
charge,  of  which  Dr.  N.  S.  Davis  of  Chicago  was  chairman.  At 
the  close  of  the  campaign  he  was  presented  with  a  fine  gold 
watch  with  this  inscription: 

"Presented  by  the  friends  of  temperance  in  Chicago  to  J.  B. 
Merwin,  Cor.  Sec.  of  the  Maine  Law  Alliance  of  the  State  of 
Illinois,  as  a  token  of  their  confidence  and  regard  for  his  untir 
ing  energy  and  perseverance  in  the  campaign  of  1855,  f°r  Pro 
hibition." 

Major  Merwin  said  that  Lincoln  wrote  the  inscription  and 
was  a  witness  of  the  presentation. 


84  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

In  the  Lincoln-Douglas  debates  Lincoln  at  one  time 
said: 

"If  slavery  is  not  wrong,  nothing  is  wrong." 
The    fact   that   a   thing   was  wrong  was   sufficient 
reason    for   Lincoln's    opposition,    and    Mr.    Merwin 
points  out  that  in  one  of  his  speeches  Lincoln  said : 

The  real  issue  in  this  controversy,  the  one  pressing 
upon  every  mind  that  gives  the  subject  careful  considera 
tion,  is  that  legalizing  the  manufacture,  sale,  and  use  of 
intoxicating  beverage  is  a  wrong — as  all  history  and  every 
development  of  the  traffic  proves  it  to  be— a  moral,  so 
cial,  and  political  wrong. 

Lieutenant  Governor  Gustave  Koerner,  one  of  the 
leading  Germans  of  Illinois,  was  the  leader  of  the 
forces  that  defeated  prohibition  in  the  campaign  of 
1855.  He  was,  however,  a  devoted  friend  of  Lincoln 

Early  in  the  Civil  War  Major  Merwin  worked  as  a  volunteer 
in  the  camps  around  Washington,  making  many  addresses  to  the 
soldiers  on  questions  of  morals,  and  especially  on  temperance. 
His  work  had  the  hearty  commendation  of  the  then  commander- 
in-chief,  General  Winfield  Scott.  On  July  24,  1862,  President 
Lincoln  issued  this  order :  "Surgeon  General  will  send  Mr. 
Merwin  where  he  may  think  the  public  service  will  require." 
A  number  of  the  army  officers,  members  of  Congress  and  other 
prominent  men  heartily  endorsed  Mr.  Merwin's  army  work. 
The  notes  of  General  Scott  and  President  Lincoln  have  been 
preserved  in  facsimile.  In  the  Century  Magazine  of  June,  1917, 
Major  Merwin  had  a  Lincoln  story,  and  the  following  statement 
was  published  in  the  editorial  notes : 

Major  J.  B.  Merwin,  veteran  temperance  worker,  got  to  know 
Lincoln  very  well  when  they  were  both  working  in  the  temper 
ance  cause  in  Illinois  during  the  years  1854-1855.  From  1861 
to  1865  Major  Merwin  was  in  Washington  nearly  all  the  time, 
engaged  in  temperance  work  among  the  soldiers.  "In  fact," 
he  writes,  "when  I  was  in  Washington,  I  slept  on  the  top  floor 
of  the  White  House  and  came  to  know  Lincoln  about  as  well  as 
any  one  could." 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  85 

and  ardently  supported  him  in  his  nomination  and 
election  as  President.  It  may  be  counted  certain  that 
if  Lincoln  had  ever  uttered  any  words  against  prohi 
bition  his  friend  and  admirer  would  have  used  them 
in  the  campaign. 

It  is  said  that  some  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  political  follow 
ers  were  alarmed  about  his  radicalism  on  the  prohibi-' 
tion  question  and  made  an  unsuccessful  effort  to  si 
lence  him. 

It  is  a  fact  that  has  escaped  mention  by  the  major 
ity  of  Lincoln's  biographers  that  the  first  newspaper 
nomination  of  Lincoln  for  President  was  in  a  journal 
that  was  noted  as  an  advocate  of  temperance  reform. 

In  a  letter  written  by  William  O.  Stoddard,  one  of 
Lincoln's  secretaries,  dated  June  30,  1917,  is  this 
statement : 

I  wrote  and  printed  the  first  editorial  nomination  of 
him  for  President.  I  sent  out  200  extra  copies  to  the 
press  and  it  was  widely  copied  and  commented  on.  The 
Central, Illinois  Gazette  (Champaign,  Illinois),  of  which 
I  was  part  owner  and  sole  editor,  was  the  only  out-and- 
out  aggressive  temperance  journal  in  all  that  region.  We 
were  bitterly  assailed  as  ''fanatics"  but  we  kept  our  own 
place  "dry."  7 

The  first  notice  was  under  the  title :  "Our  Next 
President."  It  appeared  in  the  Central  Illinois  Ga 
zette  on  May  4,  1859,  and  is  republished  by  Whitney.8 

7  Personal  letter  to  the  author. 
*  "Life  of  Lincoln,"  p.  262. 


CHAPTER  VI 
LINCOLN'S  GREAT  TEMPERANCE  SPEECH 

Abraham  Lincoln's  name  is  high  in  the  list  of  the 
great  orators  of  the  world.  His  greatest  speeches  are 
identified  with  questions  of  moral  and  political  reform. 
His  plain,  vigorous  Anglo-Saxon  style  gave  him  note 
before  his  time  of  wider  fame.  The  "Gettysburg  Ad 
dress"  and  the  "Second  Inaugural  Address"  are 
counted  his  masterpieces.  His  letter  to  Mrs.  Bixby, 
expressing  his  sympathy  to  her  as  the  mother  of  five 
sons  who  had  died  as  soldiers  in  the  Union  Army,  is 
hung  in  a  great  library  at  Oxford  University  as  a 
model  of  English  style. 

Mr.  Bryce,  writing  of  the  florid  rhetoric  so1  common 
in  the  oratory  of  Lincoln's  time,  says  that  Lincoln 
"escaped  it  entirely"  and  that  "his  example  had  much 
to  do  in  changing  the  common  practice  to  a  new  style 
whose  notes  were  simplicity,  directness,  and  breadth."  l 

Dr.  Newton,  discussing  the  influences  upon  young 
men  in  the  law  office  of  Lincoln  and  Herndon,  says : 

A  new  school  of  eloquence  might  have  formed  itself 
by  the  methods  of  Lincoln,  depending  for  its  results,  not 
upon  the  subtlety  of  the  rhetoric  nor  the  magic  of  elocu- 

1  "Introduction  to  Speeches  and  Letters  of  Abraham  Lincoln," 
James  Bryce,  p.  i. 

8? 


88  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

tion,  but  claiming  attention  and  assent  by  direct  and  hon 
est  appeals  to  the  common  understanding.2 

Lincoln  has  so  great  a  reputation  as  a  story-teller 
that  many  have  wondered  why  so  few  of  his  stories 
are  to  be  found  in  his  published  addresses,  In  the 
course  of  the  famous  debates  with  Senator  Douglas 
some  of  his  friends  did,  indeed,  urge  him  to  introduce 
more  of  his  witty  illustrations  and  funny  stories,  and 
so  get  applause.  Lincoln,  however,  replied : 

"The  occasion  is  too  serious.  I  do  not  seek  ap 
plause,  or  to  amuse  the  people,  but  to  convince  them." 

Biographers  of  Lincoln  make  special  mention  of 
three  speeches:  the  one  delivered  by  invitation  of  the 
Springfield  Washingtonian  Society,  February  22, 
1842;  the  "House  Divided  Against  Itself,"  at  Spring 
field,  June  17,  1858;  and  the  "Cooper  Institute  Ad 
dress,"  February  27,  1860.  In  connection  with  all  of 
these  there  is  evidence  that  they  were  prepared  with 
special  care  and  regarded  by  Lincoln  himself  as  his 
own  productions  of  special  value.  The  two  later 
speeches  had  direct  relation  to  his  nomination  and 
election  as  President. 

The  Washingtonian  movement  came  to  its  climax  in 
1842,  and  the  22nd  of  February  of  that  year  was  noted 
for  the  great  temperance  meetings  held  in  all  parts  of 
the  country.  In  many  cities  there  were  parades  with 
music  and  banners.  In  Boston,  Faneuil  Hall  was 
filled  three  times  during  the  day  with  enthusiastic  au 
diences. 

2  "Lincoln  and  Herndon,"  p.  255. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  89 

Dr.  John  Marsh  described  the  celebration  in  New 
York  in  these  words: 

The  grand  festival  at  Center  Market  Hall  on  the  birth 
day  of  our  immortal  Washington  was  got  up  and  carried 
through  in  a  style  worthy  of  the  movement  with  which  it 
was  connected.  The  magnitude  of  the  halls,  their  ap 
propriate  decorations,  the  immense  crowds  of  people,  the 
eloquence  of  the  orators,  the  beauty  and  rich  supply  of 
the  table,  the  hearty  congratulations  of  the  guests,  the 
pith  of  the  sentiments  and  the  power  of  the  temperance 
odes  sung  by  thousands  of  voices — these,  gratifying  as 
they  were,  did  not  fill  our  vision  so  much  as  the  object 
of  the  festival  and  the  character  and  circumstances  of  the 
many  there,  once  poor,  unfortunate  drunkards,  now  dis 
enthralled,  reformed  men  gathered  together  with  their 
happy  families  to  rejoice  in  their  wonderful  deliverance ; 
the  whole  forming  an  entirely  new  era  in  the  moral  his 
tory  of  our  great  city.3 

Notable  meetings  were  held  in  Washington  City. 
The  Congressional  Temperance  Society  had  been  or 
ganized  there  in  1833,  its  object  as  announced  being 
"by  example  and  kind  moral  influence  to  discounte 
nance  the  use  of  ardent  spirits  and  the  traffic  in  it 
throughout  the  community."  The  pledge  did  not  for 
bid  the  use  of  fermented  and  malt  liquors,  and  it  was 
found  that  this  partial  pledge  did  not  prevent  the  fall 
of  members  of  the  society.  Under  the  influence  of 
the  Washingtonian  movement  the  society  was  reorgan 
ized  in  1842  on  the  basis  of  total  abstinence  from  all 
intoxicating  liquors.  Thomas  Marshall,  of  Ken- 

3  "Life  of  John  H.  W.  Hawkins,"  p.  187. 


9o  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

tucky,  a  brilliant  Congressman,  himself  a  victim  of 
drink,  began  a  speech  at  the  time  of  the  reorganiza 
tion  of  the  society  with  these  words: 

The  old  Congressional  Temperance  Society  has  died  of 
intemperance,  holding  the  pledge  in  one  hand  and  a  cham 
pagne  bottle  in  the  other. 

The  whole  country  was  so  affected  by  the  Washing- 
tonian  crusade  that  many  enthusiastic  friends  of  tem 
perance  believed  their  cause  was  about  to  triumph  and 
that  the  liquor  traffic  was  to  be  annihilated.  In  this 
year  of  1842  the  demand  for  whiskey  was  reduced 
one-half  from  that  of  the  previous  year,  because  of 
the  reformation  of  the  drinkers.  Distilleries  ran  only 
on  half-time. 

Fashionable  drinking,  too,  was  becoming  unfash 
ionable.  The  New  York  Mercantile  Journal  made  the 
statement : 

At  the  great  and  splendid  levee  given  on  the  occasion 
of  his  daughter's  marriage,  the  President  of  the  United 
States  of  America  had  not  a  drop  of  wine  or  other  alco 
holics  furnished.  Nothing  but  cold  water  was  to  be  had, 
and  on  a  wedding  occasion,  too.  What  a  noble  step ! 
One  which  will  draw  to  him  thousands  of  hearts,  warm 
and  fresh,  and  will  tell  on  the  future  destinies  of  the 
nation. 

Many  people  thought  the  movement,  founded  on 
the  law  of  love,  would  win  the  final  battle  against  in 
temperance.  At  a  great  convention  held  in  Boston  in 
1842,  the  following  resolution  was  adopted: 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  91 

RESOLVED,  That  the  unparalleled  success  of  the  Wash- 
ingtonian  movement  in  reforming  the  drunkard  and  in 
ducing  the  retailer  to  cease  his  unholy  traffic  affords  con 
clusive  evidence  that  moral  suasion  is  the  true  and  proper 
basis  of  action  in  the  temperance  cause;  and  that  we, 
therefore,  earnestly  recommend  to  its  friends  not  to  com 
promise  the  high  and  commanding  position  it  now  occu 
pies. 

On  the  22nd  of  February  in  the  same  year,  at  the 
request  of  the  Springfield  Washingtonian  Society, 
Lincoln  made  his  great  address  in  the  Second  Presby 
terian  Church.  It  has  become  a  classic  in  temper 
ance  reform. 

Herndon  writes: 

Early  in  1842  he  entered  into  the  Washingtonian 
movement  organized  to  suppress  the  evils  of  intem 
perance.  At  the  request  of  the  Society  he  delivered  an 
admirable  address  on  Washington's  birthday  in  the 
Presbyterian  Church.4 

Lamon  says : 

For  many  years  Lincoln  was  an  ardent  agitator  against 
the  use  of  intoxicating  beverages  and  made  speeches  far 
and  near  in  favor  of  total  abstinence.  Some  of  them 
were  printed,  and  of  one  of  them  he  was  not  a  little 
proud.5 

Robert  PI.  Browne  says : 

In  those  years  of  cheap  whiskey,  dwarfed  lives  and 
rum-rotted  intellects,  he  heartily  united  with  a  company 

4  Herndon  and  Weik,  p.  248. 

6  "Life  of  Lincoln,"  Lamon,  p.  480. 


92  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

of  the  brave  and  fearless  men  and  women  of  the  time  in 
about  the  first  crusading  organization  against  the  drink 
ing,  sure-killing  rum  habit — the  Washingtonians,  a  fa 
mous  temperance  society  that  saved  many  a  victim  and 
accomplished  wondrous  good  in  its  day.  He  was  an  or 
ganizer,  and  in  visits  to  different  places  he  organized  and 
started  several  temperance  societies.6 

Mr.  Browne  also  gives  extracts  from  Lincoln's 
noted  speech  of  1842  as  an  illustration  of  his  early 
prowess  and  zeal. 

Dr.  Newton  says: 

In  1842  Lincoln  took  part  in  the  Washingtonian  tem 
perance  crusade,  making  several  speeches,  one  of  which 
has  come  down  to  us.  Comparing  it  with  his  former  ef 
forts,  one  discovers  a  marked  advance  in  restrain  of 
style,  which  became  every  year  less  decorative  and  more 
forthright,  simple  and  thrusting;  and  the  style  was  the 
man.  Rarely  has  that  difficult  theme  been  treated  in  so 
calm,  earnest,  and  judicious  a  manner  with  surer  insight 
or  a  finer  spirit.  He  was  already  dreaming,  it  would 
seem,  of  a  time  when  there  should  be  neither  a  slave  nor 
a  drunkard  in  the  republic.  But  his  address,  so  far  from 

6  "Abraham  Lincoln,"  Robert  H.  Browne,  Vol.  I,  p.  281. 

Mr.  Browne  also  said :  "In  those  days  of  'hard  cider'  and 
many  harder  and  stronger  liquors,  there  was  a  deal  of  intem 
perance  everywhere,  and  the  country  was  full  of  drunkards, 
made  so  in  part  perhaps  by  abundant  and  low-priced  liquor.  It 
was  a  'devil's  broth'  and  was  not  only  intoxicating  and  drove  men 
mad  drunk,  but  killed  almost  as  surely  as  it  brutalized  the  sense 
and  soul  of  its  victims.  The  land  was  filled  with  the  wrecks 
and  remnants  of  what  had  been  talented,  industrious,  and  prom 
ising  men.  .  .  .  One  of  the  pertinent  reasons  why  Lincoln  was 
so  little  understood  in  his  day  by  the  men  with  him  and  about 
him  was  because  of  the  flagrant  dissipation  that  was  seen  con 
stantly  all  around  him  and  in  which  he  never  participated." 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  93 

finding  favor,  excited  hostility,  for,  speaking  out  of  his 
wide  knowledge  of  men  and  the  wise  pity  which  such 
knowledge  begets,  he  was  led  to  say  frankly  that  those 
who  had  never  fallen  into  the  toils  of  the  vice  had  es 
caped  more  by  lack  of  appetite  than  by  any  moral  superi 
ority,  and  that,  taken  as  a  class,  drinking  men  would  com 
pare  favorably  in  head  and  heart  with  any  other  class. 
This  was  as  a  red  rag  to  the  more  intemperate  of  the 
temperance  reformers,  to  whom  drinking  was  a  crime — 
a  temper  of  mind  to  which  Lincoln,  as  abstemious  in  habit 
as  in  speech,  was  averse.  Indeed,  his  pre-eminent  sanity 
in  the  midst  of  extremists  was  one  of  the  chief  attrac 
tions  of  his  life.7 

In  more  than  one  letter  Lincoln  has  referred  to  this 
address  in  a  way  that  showed  he  regarded  it  as  worthy 
of  special  consideration.  To  his  intimate  friend  Joshua 
F.  Speed  he  wrote  : 

You  will  see  by  the  last  Sangamon  Journal  that  I  made 
a  temperance  speech  on  the  22nd  of  February,  which  I 
claim  that  Fanny  and  you  shall  head  as  an  act  of  charity 
to  me ;  for  I  cannot  learn  that  anybody  else  has  read  it  or 
is  likely  to.  Fortunately,  it  is  not  very  long,  and  I  shall 
deem  it  a  sufficient  compliance  with  my  request  if  one 
of  you  listens  while  the  other  reads  it.8 

Major-General  George  Edward  Pickett,  one  of  Gen 
eral  Robert  E.  Lee's  division  commanders,  and  fa 
mous  as  the  leader  of  the  brilliant  but  disastrous  charge 

7  "Lincoln  and   Herndon,"  p.    16.     The  story  was  first  printed 
in  the  Sangamon  Journal,  and  has  since  been  reprinted  several 
times. 

8  "Life  of  Lincoln,"  Whitney,  "Letters,"  Vol.  Ill,  p.  181. 


94  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

at  Gettysburg,  received  his  appointment  to  West  Point 
through  Lincoln's  influence.  In  a  letter  written  to  the 
young  cadet  Lincoln  said  : 

I  have  just  told  the  folks  here  in  Springfield  on  this 
i  nth  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  him  whose  name, 
mightiest  in  the  cause  of  civil  liberty,  still  mightiest  in 
the  cause  for  moral  reformation,  we  mention  in  solemn 
awe,  in  naked,  deathless  splendor,  that  the  one  victory 
we  can  ever  call  complete  will  be  that  one  which  pro 
claims  that  there  is  not  one  slave  or  one  drunkard  on  the 
face  of  God's  green  earth.  Recruit  for  this  victory.9 

In  opening  his  Springfield  temperance  address  Lin 
coln  said  that  while  the  temperance  cause  had  been  in 
progress  for  twenty  years  it  was  "just  now  crowned 
with  a  degree  of  success  hitherto  unparalleled."  The 
cause  was  "transformed  from  a  cold,  abstract  theory 
to  a  living,  breathing,  active,  and  powerful  chieftain, 
going  forth  'conquering  and  to  conquer.' '  The  liquor 
business  he  called  a  great  adversary,  whose  citadels 
the  chieftain  is  pictured  as  storming  and  dismantling 
and  whose  idolatrous  temples  are  being  deserted. 

The  new  and  splendid  success  of  the  Washingtonian 
movement  Lincoln  ascribed  to  rational  causes,  whereas, 
he  pointed  out,  in  previous  attacks  on  the  demon  of 
intemperance  the  champions  had  not  used  the  best 
tactics.  Most  of  the  champions  had  been  preachers, 
lawyers,  and  hired  agents,  and  their  want  of  approach- 
ability  to  the  victims  of  drink  had  been  fatal  to  suc- 

9  McClure 's  Magazine,  March,  1908. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  95 

cess.  The  new  champion,  he  said,  had  been  a  victim 
of  intemperance — one  who 

bursts  the  fetters  that  bound  him  and  appears  before  his 
neighbors  "clothed  and  in  his  right  mind,"  a  redeemed 
specimen  of  long-lost  humanity,  and  stands  up  with  tears 
of  joy  trembling  in  his  eyes,  to  tell  of  the  miseries  he 
once  endured,  now  to  be  endured  no  more  forever ;  of 
his  once  naked  and  starving  children  now  clad  and  fed 
comfortably;  of  a  wife,  long  weighed  down  with  woe, 
weeping,  now  restored  to  health,  happiness,  and  renewed 
affection ;  and  how  easily  it  all  is  done  once  it  is  resolved 
to  be  done ;  however  simple  his  language,  there  is  a  logic 
and  eloquence  in  it  that  few  with  human  feelings  can 
resist. 

This  is  a  vivid  description  of  what  was  constantly 
taking  place  in  the  Washingtonian  meetings,  where 
the  principal  speakers  were  the  reformed  drunkards. 
It  may  be  that  sometimes  they  dwelt  too  much  on  their 
previous  degradation,  with  the  purpose  of  making 
their  reform  the  more  striking. 

As  to  the  former  advocates  of  liquor,  Lincoln  said 
that  "too  much  denunciation  against  dram-sellers  and 
dram-drinkers  had  been  indulged  in."  He  thought 
this  impolitic  and  unjust,  because  the  tendency  of  hu 
man  nature  was  "to  meet  denunciation  with  denuncia 
tion,  crimination  with  crimination,  and  anathema  with 
anathema."  In  urging  the  policy  of  kindly  persuasion 
he  quoted  the  maxim  that  "a  drop  of  honey  catches 
more  flies  than  a  gallon  of  gall,"  and  he  asserted  that 
"the  kindly  method  of  the  Washingtonians  to  convince 


96  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

and  persuade  their  old  companions  was  proving  itself 
the  best  plan." 

The  denunciation  method  Lincoln  pronounced  un 
just,  because  of  the  very  widespread  use  of  liquor  for 
ages.  Intoxicating  liquor,  he  said,  had,  until  a  decade 
or  two*  ago<,  been  recognized  by  everybody  and  repudi 
ated  by  nobody.  "From  the  sideboard  of  the  parson 
to  the  ragged  pocket  of  the  homeless  loafer  it  was  con 
stantly  found."  Physicians  even  then  prescribed  it, 
governments  provided  it  for  their  soldiers  and  sail 
ors,  and  it  was  thought  insufferable  not  to  supply  liq 
uor  for  all  forms  of  social  occasions  or  public  gath 
erings.  It  was  everywhere  a  respectable  article  of 
merchandise,  being  bought  and  sold  by  reputable  peo 
ple  like  any  of  the  real  necessaries  of  life.  While  "it 
was  known  and  acknowledged  that  many  were  greatly 
injured  by  it,  none  seemed  to>  think  that  the  injury 
arose  from  the  use  of  a  bad  thing,  but  from  the  abuse 
of  a  very  good  thing." 

In  this  Washingtonian  address  at  Springfield,  Lin 
coln  also  said  that  another  error  of  the  old  reformers 
was  to  assume  that 

all  habitual  drunkards  were  utterly  incorrigible  and  there 
fore  must  be  turned  adrift  and  damned  without  rem 
edy  in  order  that  the  grace  of  temperance  might  abound 
to  the  temperate  then  and  to  all  mankind  some  hundreds 
of  years  thereafter. 

He  challenged  this  position  as  "something  so  re 
pugnant  to  humanity,  so  uncharitable,  so  cold-blooded 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  97 

and  feelingless  that  it  never  did  nor  ever  can  enlist 
the  enthusiasm  of  a  popular  cause." 

The  benefits  of  this  plan  of  reformation,  he  con 
tended,  were 

too  remote  in  point  of  time  to  warmly  engage  many  in  its 
behalf.  Few  can  be  induced  to  labor  exclusively  for 
posterity,  and  none  will  do  it  enthusiastically.  Posterity 
lias  done  nothing  for  us,  and,  theorize  on  it  as  we  may, 
practically  we  shall  do  very  little  for  it  unless  we  are 
made  to  think  we  are,  at  the  same  time,  doing  something 
for  ourselves. 

He  declared  that  it  showed  an  ignorance  of  human 
nature 

to  ask  or  expect  a  whole  community  to  rise  up  and  labor 
for  the  temporal  happiness  of  others  after  themselves 
shall  be  consigned  to  the  dust. 

Pleasures  to<  be  enjoyed  or  pains  to  be  endured,  he 
contended,  were  but  little  regarded  even  in  our  own 
cases  and  much  less  in  the  case  of  others.  In  this 
connection  he  gave  the  only  anecdote  in  the  whole 
speech : 

"Better  lay  down  the  spade  you're  stealing,  Paddy, — if 
you  don't  you  will  pay  for  it  at  the  day  of  judgment." 
"By  the  powers,  if  you'll  credit  me  so  long,  I'll  take  an 
other  jist." 

The  Washingtonians,  he  said,  repudiated  the  sys 
tem  of  consigning  the  habitual  drunkard  to  hopeless 


98  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

ruin,  but  labored  for  their  present  as  well  as  future 
good. 

They  teach  hope  to  all  and  despair  to  none.  As  ap 
plied  to  their  cause  they  deny  the  doctrine  of  unpardon 
able  sin.  As  in  Christianity  it  is  taught  so  in  this  they 
teach  that 

"While  the  lamp  holds  out  to  burn 
The  vilest  sinner  may  return." 

He  contended  that  these  men,  even  if  unlearned,  had 
been  taught  in  the  school  of  experience,  and  he  insisted 
that 

Those  who  have  suffered  by  intemperance  personally 
and  have  reformed  are  the  most  powerful  and  efficient 
instruments  to  push  the  reformation  to  ultimate  success. 


He  then  made  an  appeal  to  those  who  had  not  suf 
fered  personally  from  drink — to  those  who  say, 
"What  good  can  I  do  by  signing  the  pledge?  I  never 
drink,  even  without  signing."  His  first  appeal  was 
that  they  should  sign  to  give  moral  support  to  the  man 
struggling  with  his  acquired  appetite  who  needs  every 
helpful  influence  that  can  be  thrown  around  him. 

He  referred  to  the  power  of  fashion,  showing  how 
men's  actions  are  influenced  by  the  example  of  others, 
and  urged  that  it  be  made  unfashionable  to  withhold 
one's  name  from  the  temperance  pledge. 

To  those  who  would  say,  "By  joining  a  reformed 
drunkards'  society  we  would  acknowledge  ourselves 
as  drunkards"  he  made  this  powerful  appeal : 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  99 

Surely  no  Christians  will  adhere  to  this  objection.  If 
they  believe,  as  they  profess,  that  Omnipotence  con 
descended  to  take  on  Himself  the  form  of  sinful  men, 
as  such  to  die  an  ignominious  death  for  their  sakes, 
surely  they  will  not  refuse  submission  to  the  infinitely 
lesser  condescension  for  the  temporal  and  perhaps  eternal 
salvation  of  a  large,  erring  and  unfortunate  class  of  their 
fellow  creatures.  Nor  is  the  condescension  very  great. 

Herndon,  who  attended  the  meeting,  says  that  this 
statement  gave  offense  to  a  number  of  people,  some 
even  charging  Lincoln  with  infidelity.  When  he  made 
his  campaign  for  Congress  against  Peter  Cartwright 
some  portions  of  this  speech  \vere  used  against  him 
to  show  that  he  was  an  unbeliever. 

His  slighting  allusion,  expressed  in  the  address  at  the 
Presbyterian  Church  before  the  Washingtonian  Temper 
ance  Society,  February  22,  four  years  before,  to  the  in 
sincerity  of  Christian  people,  was  not  forgotten.10 

Alonzo  Rothschild  in  the  discussion  of  Lincoln's 
campaign  for  Congress,  says : 

The  charges  of  impiety  covertly  made  in  former  pri 
mary  contests  by  Lincoln's  own  Whig  associates  were 
now  publicly  urged  against  him  with  the  greater  earnest 
ness  by  his  Democratic  opponents.  .  .  . 

Lincoln's  alleged  irreligion  slyly  hinted,  a  duel  that  had 
been  talked  of  but  had  never  been  fought,  and  an  un 
popular  temperance  address  recently  delivered  were 
among  the  charges  used  against  him.11 

10  Herndon  and  Weik,  Vol.  I,  p.  259. 
u  Rothschild,  "Honest  Abe,"  p.  279. 


TOO  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

H.  B.  Rankin  records  that  Cartwright  told  him 
years  afterward  that  he  and  his  friends  had  been  mis 
taken  as  to  these  charges.  Mr.  Rankin  also*  gives  an 
account  of  a  speech  that  Cartwright  made  in  connec 
tion  with  Lincoln's  campaign  for  reelection.  It  was 
in  New  York,  to  a  company  of  prominent  New  York 
ers  whose  consciences,  in  Cartwright' s  own  words, 
"were  choked  with  cotton  and  cankered  with  gold." 
The  speaker  denounced  their  disloyalty  and  said: 

I  stand  here  to-night  to  commend  to  you  the  Christian 
character,  sterling  integrity,  and  far-seeing  capacity  of 
the  President  of  the  United  States,  whose  official  acts 
you  have  in  your  blind  money-madness  so  critically  as 
sailed  to-night.12 

Lincoln  frequently  quoted  Scripture  in  his  speeches. 
In  the  Springfield  temperance  address  there  are  at  least 
eight  quotations  or  direct  references  to  the  Bible. 

Referring  to  the  prevalent  idea  that  drunkards  were 
inferior  types,  he  said  : 

If  we  take  habitual  drunkards  as  a  class  their  heads 
and  hearts  will  bear  an  advantageous  comparison  with 
those  of  any  other  class. 

And  he  adds: 

What  one  of  us  but  can  call  to  mind  some  dear  rela 
tive,  more  promising  in  youth  than  all  his  fellows,  who 
has  fallen  a  sacrifice  to  the  rapacity  of  the  demon  of  in 
temperance  ? 

12  H.  B.  Rankin,  "Personal  Recollections,"  p.  274. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  i-oi; 

Lincoln  was  evidently  much  moved  by  the  powerful 
results  of  the  Washingtonian  reform.  "If  the  rela 
tive  grandeur  of  revolutions  shall  be  estimated  by  the 
great  amount  of  human  misery  they  alleviate,  and  the 
small  amount  they  inflict,  then  indeed  will  this  be  the 
grandest  the  world  shall  ever  have  seen."  He  com 
pared  the  movement  with  the  political  revolution  of 
1776,  which  had  brought  so  much  political  freedom, 
and  in  which  the  world  had  "found  a  solution  of  that 
long-mooted  problem  as  to  the  capability  of  man  to 
govern  himself."  While  that  was  glorious,  there  were 
mixed  with  it  evils  of  war,  famine,  "the  orphan's  cry, 
the  widow's  wail,"  as  part  of  the  price  paid  for  its 
blessings.  "Turn  now  to  the  temperance  revolution. 
In  it  we  shall  find  a  stronger  bondage  broken,  a  viler 
slavery  manumitted,  a  greater  tyrant  deposed.  In  it 
more  of  want  supplied,  more  disease  healed,  more  sor 
row  assuaged.  By  it  no  orphans  starving,  no  widows 
weeping."  He  also  called  the  temperance  reformation 
a  noble  ally  to  the  cause  of  political  freedom.  He  saw, 
too,  with  prophetic  eye,  the  future  that  seems  now  to 
be  dawning: 

Even  the  dram-maker  and  the  dram-seller  will  have 
glided  into  other  occupations  so  gradually  as  never  to 
have  felt  the  shock  of  change,  and  will  stand  ready  to 
join  all  others  in  the  universal  song  of  gladness. 

When  we  remember  that  this  speech  was  made  more 
than  three-quarters  of  a  century  ago,  its  breadth  of 
vision,  its  sane  and  powerful  arguments,  and  its  con 
fident  faith  in  the  coming  triumph  of  the  cause  he  ad- 


LG2  -.LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

vocated  make  it  one  of  the  most  remarkable  of  tem 
perance  pleas  and  a  permanent  document  of  priceless 
value.  We  do  well  to-day  to  mark  its  expression  of 
the  true  Lincolnian  spirit : 

With  malice  toward  none,  with  charity  for  all,  with 
firmness  in  the  right  as  God  gives  us  to  see  the  right,  let 
us  strive  on  to  finish  the  work  we  are  in. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  PRESIDENTS  AND  LIQUOR 

There  is  no  higher  office  than  that  of  President  of 
the  United  States.  It  is  but  natural  that  men  should 
wish  to  use  the  luster  and  dignity  attaching  to  that  high 
office  to  advance  a  cause,  and  that  the  indorsement  by 
the  President  of  any  movement  should  be  counted  of 
great  value. 

For  nearly  a  century  friends  of  temperance  reforms 
have  sought  to  identify  with  this  cause  our  chief  mag 
istrates. 

Edward  C.  Delavan  in  1834  caused  to  be  drawn  up 
a  statement  that  has  become  known  as  the  "Presidents' 
Declaration,"  which  reads  as  follows: 

Being  satisfied  from  observation  and  experience  as  well 
as  from  medical  authority  that  ardent  spirit  as  a  drink 
is  not  only  needless  but  hurtful,  and  that  the  entire  dis 
use  of  it  would  tend  to  promote  the  health,  the  virtue, 
and  the  happiness  of  the  community,  we  hereby  express 
our  conviction  that,  should  the  citizens  of  the  United 
States,  and  especially  the  young  men,  discontinue  entirely 
the  use  of  it,  they  would  not  only  promote  their  own 
personal  benefit,  but  the  good  of  our  country  and  the 
world. 

103 


104  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

To  this  declaration  were  signed  the  names  of  Presi 
dents  Jackson,  Madison,  John  Quincy  Adams,  Van 
Buren,  Tyler,  Polk,  Taylor,  Fillmore,  Pierce,  and 
Lincoln. 

In  a  debate  on  Prohibition  in  the  National  Congress 
in  1914  a  member  declared: 

"Washington  was  a  distiller,  Jefferson  was  a  brewer, 
Lincoln  was  a  saloonkeeper." 

George  Washington  was,  indeed,  an  extensive 
farmer,  and  as  such  he  could  with  equal  propriety  be 
called  a  miller,  a  manufacturer,  a  pork-packer,  or  a 
stockman,  as  well  as  a  distiller ;  for  he  had  dealings  in 
all  these  lines  of  trade.  In  his  time  almost  every  large 
farm  in  the  country  where  grain  or  fruit  was  raised 
had  its  own  still.  There  were  reported  15,000  dis 
tilleries  at  that  period.  Washington  had  a  number  of 
plantations  under  the  supervision  of  overseers,  and 
each  of  these  was  expected  to  show  the  largest  pos 
sible  profits.  Liquor  made  in  the  distillery  on  one  o<f 
his  plantations  may  have  been  sold  just  as  meat  and 
vegetables  and  even  slaves  were  sold.1 

In  the  days  of  Washington  drink  was  a  source  of 
much  trouble.  In  making  a  contract  with  an  overseer 
he  added  the  clause : 

And  whereas  there  are  a  number  of  whiskey  stills  very 
contiguous  to  the  said  plantation  and  many  idle, 
drunken,  and  dissolute  people  continually  resorting  to 
the  same,  priding  themselves  in  debauching  sober  and 
well-inclined  persons,  the  said  Ed  Violet  doth  promise 

1  Ford,  "The  True  George  Washington." 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  105 

for  his  own  sake  and  his  employer's  to  avoid  them  as  he 
ought. 

Washington  also  wrote  about  a  man  he  employed  to 
take  charge  of  his  Negro  carpenters: 

I  am  apprehensive  that  Green  will  never  overcome  his 
propensity  to  drink;  that  it  is  this  which  occasions  his 
frequent  sickness,  his  absences  from  work,  and  his  pov 
erty. 

One  of  the  first  orders  General  Washington  issued 
when  he  took  command  of  the  Continental  troops  at 
Cambridge,  March  25,  1776,  contained  this  clause: 

All  officers  of  the  Continental  Army  are  enjoined  to 
assist  the  civil  magistrates  in  the  execution  of  their  duty 
and  to  promote  peace  and  good  order.  They  are  to  pre 
vent,  as  much  as  possible,  the  soldiers  from  frequenting 
tippling-houses. 

On  May  26,  1778,  Washington  ordered  a  detail  of 
a  corporal  and  eight  men  with  the  commissary  of  each 
brigade,  who  were  directed  to  confiscate  liquors  found 
in  the  vicinity  of  the  camp,  and  also  to  notify  the 
neighboring  inhabitants  "that  an  unconditional  seiz 
ure  will  be  made  of  all  liquors  they  shall  presume 
to  sell  in  the  future."  He  also  issued  this  order: 

All  persons  whatever  are  forbid  selling  liquor  to  the 
Indians.  If  any  settler  or  soldier  shall  presume  to  act 
contrary  to  this  prohibition,  the  former  shall  be  dismissed 
from  the  camp  and  the  latter  receive  severe  corporal  pun 
ishment. 


io6  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

Thomas  Jefferson  was  also  an  extensive  farmer,  and 
his  home  at  Monticello  was  described  as  a  principal 
ity  of  two  hundred  inhabitants.  There  were  shops 
for  shoemaking,  tailoring,  and  weaving,  and  a  mill  for 
the  accommodation  of  neighbors. 

Jefferson,  in  a  discussion  of  the  work  of  the  farmers, 
replying  to  the  question,  "What  can  we  raise  for  the 
.market?"  said : 

"Some  say  whiskey,  but  all  mankind  must  become 
drunkards  to  consume  it."  2 

As  to  the  charge  that  Jefferson  was  a  brewer,  the 
only  record  is  that  he  was  so  impressed  with  the  evils 
of  liquor-drinking  that  he  wrote  a  letter  favoring  the 
manufacture  of  beer  as  a  substitute  for  the  more  fiery 
distilled  spirits,  in  which  letter  he  said : 

I  wish  to  see  this  beverage  common  instead  of  whis 
key,  which  kills  one-third  of  our  citizens  and  ruins  their 
families. 

During  the  period  of  the  first  widespread  popular 
movement  for  temperance, — the  Washingtonian, — 
there  was  so  anti-alcoholic  a  sentiment  that  President 

"The  Cyclopedia  of  Temperance,  Prohibition  and  Public 
Morals,"  p.  156. 

W.  P.  T.  Fergison  writes :  "There  is  no  doubt  that  there  was 
a  certain  toleration  of  the  drink  business  among  the  Revolu 
tionary  fathers.  This  was  particularly  true  as  regards  the  manu 
facture  of  beer.  The  beer  business  was  something  very  differ 
ent  from  what  it  is  now.  There  were  no  great  brewing  com 
panies  with  millions  of  dollars  of  capital,  corrupting  politicians, 
intimidating  city  and  state  governments,  controlling  vice  sys 
tems,  and  exploiting  the  working  masses.  It  took  almost  one 
hundred  years  for  the  brewing  business  to  develop  to  what  it  is 
to-day,  and  for  its  evils  to  begin  to  be  recognized." 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  107 

Polk  opened  the  White  House  without  wine  upon  his 
table. 

About  this  time  the  venerable  ex-President,  John 
Quincy  Adams,  in  an  address,  said : 

I  regard  the  temperance  movement  of  the  present  day 
as  one  of  the  most  remarkable  phenomena  of  the  human 
race,  operating  simultaneously  in  every  part  of  the  world 
for  the  reformation  of  a  vice  often  solitary  in  itself,  but 
as  infectious  in  its  nature  as  the  smallpox  or  the  plague, 
and  combining  all  the  ills  of  war,  pestilence,  and  famine. 
Among  those  who  have  fallen  by  intemperance  are  in 
cluded  untold  numbers  who  were  respected  for  their  tal 
ents  and  worth  and  exalted  among  their  neighbors  and 
countrymen.3 

President  Andrew  Jackson  authorized  the  abolish 
ment  of  the  spirit  ration  in  the  army.  He  declared 
that  it  had  been  shown  by  medical  reports  that  "the 
habitual  use  of  ardent  spirits  by  the  troops  has  a  per 
nicious  effect  upon  their  health,  morals,  and  disci 
pline,"  and  he  ordered  that  "commissaries  cease  to  is 
sue  ardent  spirits  as  a  part  of  the  daily  ration  of  the 
soldier."  4 

One  of  the  most  interesting  chapters  in  the  history 
of  the  White  House,  especially  as  concerning  the  liq 
uor  question,  is  the  story  of  Mrs.  Lucy  Webb  Hayes, 
wife  of  President  Rutherford  B.  Hayes.  Mrs.  Hayes 
was  the  first  mistress  of  the  Executive  Mansion  who 
banished  intoxicating  liquor  from  social  functions. 

3Wpoley   and  Johnson,   "Temperance    Progress,"   p.  482. 
*  Ibid.,  p.  411. 


log  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

President  and  Mrs.  Hayes  were  both  total  abstainers, 
and  there  was  much  curiosity  as  to  what  would  be 
their  attitude  in  the  matter  of  serving  liquors  at  offi 
cial  entertainments.  When  the  Russian  grand  dukes 
Alexis  and  Constantine  were  guests  at  a  White  House 
dinner  Secretary  of  State  Evarts  insisted  that  they 
were  accustomed  to-  wine  at  their  meals  and  that  it 
would  be  discourteous  to  Russia  not  to  serve  wine. 
Evarts'  plea  prevailed, — but  only  on  this  one  occasion. 
It  was  the  first  and  last  time  that  intoxicants  were 
served  while  Mrs,  Hayes  was  in  the  White  House. 

There  was  bitter  opposition  and  malignant  criticism, 
of  course,  at  the  exclusion  of  liquor  from  ceremonial 
dinners.  When  Secretary  Evarts  argued  the  ques 
tion  with  Mrs,  Hayes  and  said  it  was  an  insult  to  for 
eign  nations  not  to  furnish  wine,  she  replied : 

"I  have  young  sons  who  have  never  tasted  liquor. 
They  shall  not  receive  from  my  hand,  nor  with  the 
sanction  that  its  use  in  our  family  would  give,  their 
first  taste  of  what  might  prove  their  ruin.  What  I 
wish  for  my  own  sons  I  must  do  for  the  sons  of  other 
mothers." 

There  were  many  delightful  social  receptions  dur 
ing  the  Hayes  administration,  and  it  was  proved  that 
there  could  be  the  most  genial  and  hospitable  entertain 
ments  without  serving  intoxicating  liquors. 

Former  Ambassador  Bryce  says  that  while  Wash 
ington  "has  become  one  of  the  handsomest  capitals  in 
the  world,"  no  President  has  attempted  to  create  a 
court.  "As  the  earlier  career  of  the  chief  magistrate 
and  his  wife  has  seldom  qualified  them  to*  lead  the 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  109 

world  of  fashion  none  is  likely  to  make  it."     He  adds, 
however : 

The  action  of  the  wife  of  President  Hayes,  an  es- 
timahle  and  energetic  lady  whose  ardent  advocacy  of  tem 
perance  caused  the  formation  of  a  great  many  total  ab- 
stinence  societies,  called  by  her  name  (Lucy  Webb), 
showed  that  there  may  be  fields  in  which  a  President's 
consort  can  turn  her  exalted  position  to  good  account, 
while  of  course  such  graces  or  charms  as  she  possesses 
will  tend  to  increase  his  popularity.5 

President  Hayes,  on  the  recommendation  of  Gen 
eral  Miles,  issued  an  executive  order  on  February  22, 
1 88 1,  as  follows: 

In  view  of  the  well-known  fact  that  the  sale  of  intoxi 
cating  liquors  in  the  army  of  the  United  States  is  the 
cause  of  much  demoralization  among  both  officers  and 
men,  and  that  it  gives  rise  to  a  large  proportion  of  the 
cases  before  the  general  and  garrison  courts-martial,  in 
volving  great  expense  and  serious  injury  to  the  service, 
.  .  .  it  is  therefore  directed  that  the  Secretary  of  War 
take  suitable  steps,  as  far  as  practically  consistent  with 
vested  rights,  to  prevent  the  sale  of  intoxicating  liquors 
as  a  beverage  at  the  camps,  forts,  and  other  posts  of  the 
army.6 

In  1899  Secretary  of  the  Navy  John  D.  Long  issued 
an  order  forbidding  the  sale  or  issuing  "of  any  malt 
or  other  alcoholic  liquor  to  enlisted  men,  either  on 
shipboard  or  in  naval  stations."  7 

5  Bryce,  "The  American   Commonwealth,"   Vol.  I,   p.   71. 
'  "Temperance   Progress,"  p.  415, 
7  Ibid,,  p.  421. 


no  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

Secretary  of  the  Navy  Daniels  has  added  to  this  or 
der  the  exclusion  of  all  intoxicants  from  officers' 
messes,  making  the  Navy  "bone-dry."  Mr.  Daniels' 
order  followed  this  expression  from  Surgeon-General 
of  the  Navy  Braisted: 

It  may  be  stated  as  a  fact  that,  except  as  a  temporary 
expedient  in  certain  cases  of  illness,  the  use  of  alcohol 
is  harmful  and  its  abuse  disastrous  alike  to  the  individual 
and  to  the  human  race.  Its  use  in  the  service  is  based 
upon  worn-out  customs,  and  there  is  no  authority  by  law 
or  otherwise  for  its  continuance  except  as  contained  in 
the  Naval  instructions. 


Mr.  Daniels'  dry  order  as  to  the  Navy  has  been  bit 
terly  opposed  by  the  liquor  interests,  but  has  been 
strongly  indorsed  by  high  officers  in  our  own  Navy, 
and  also  by  officials  of  other  nations.  Much  of  the 
malignant  opposition  to  Secretary  Daniels  is  explained 
by  the  brutal  efforts  of  the  liquor  interests  angered  by 
his  naval  wine  mess  order. 

Admiral  Dewey  shortly  before  his  death  said: 

I  have  been  in  the  Navy  sixty-two  years  and  have 
served  under  many  Secretaries  of  the  Navy,  but  Secre 
tary  Daniels  is  the  best  Secretary  we  ever  had  and  has 
done  more  for  the  Navy  than  any  other.  I  am  amazed 
by  his  knowledge  of  technical  matters.  He  has  studied 
profoundly,  and  his  opinion  is  founded  on  close  ob 
servation.8 

8  Letter  from  Mrs.  Dewey  to  Senator  Overman,  "Cyclopedia  of 
Temperance,"  p.  289. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  in 

The  army  canteen,  as  many  will  remember,  had  in 
recent  times  become  practically  a  liquor  saloon  in 
which  army  officers  were  the  barkeepers.  In  1901, 
however,  Congress  by  a  large  majority  passed  the  fol 
lowing  law : 

The  sale  or  dealing  in  beer,  wine,  or  any  intoxicating 
liquors,  by  any  person,  in  any  port  exchange  or  canteen 
or  army  transport,  or  upon  any  premises  used  for  mili 
tary  purposes  by  the  United  States,  is  hereby  prohibited. 
The  Secretary  of  War  is  hereby  directed  to  carry  the 
provisions  of  this  section  into  full  force  and  effect. 

What  is  known  as  the  Webb-Kenyon  law,  prohibit 
ing  the  shipping  of  intoxicating  liquors  into  any  State 
when  they  are  intended  to  be  used  in  violation  of  State 
laws,  was  vetoed  by  President  Taft  in  1913.  The 
Senate,  however,  overrode  the  President's  veto  by  a 
vote  of  63  to  21  and  the  House  of  Representatives  by 
a  vote  of  244  to  95.° 

One  of  the  great  shames  of  Christendom  is  the  traf 
fic  in  intoxicating  liquors  with  the  uncivilized  nations. 
Dr.  Wilbur  F.  Crafts  says  of  this : 

The  liquor  traffic  among  child  races,  even  more  mani 
festly  than  in  civilized  lands,  injures  all  other  trades  by 

9  The  United  States  Supreme  Court,  January  8,  1917,  sus 
tained  the  Webb-Kenyon  law.  The  decision,  read  by  Chief  Jus 
tice  White,  contained  the  following: 

"The  all  reaching  power  over  liquor  is  settled.  There  was  no 
intention  of  Congress  to  forbid  individual  use  of  liquor.  The 
purpose  of  this  act  was  to  cut  out  by  the  roots  the  practice  of 
permitting  violation  of  State  liquor  laws.  We  can  have  no 
doubt  that  Congress  has  complete  authority  to  prevent  para 
lyzing  of  State  authority.  Congress  exerted  a  power  to  co 
ordinate  the  national  with  the  State  authority." 


ii2  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

producing  poverty,  disease,  and  death.  Livingstone 
said:  "All  I  can  say  in  my  solitude  is,  May  Heaven's 
richest  blessing  come  upon  every  one,  English,  Amer 
ican,  or  Turk,  who  shall  help  to  heal  this  open  sore  of  the 
world."  The  United  States  government  has  long  pro 
hibited  the  sale  of  liquor  to  our  Indians.  Christian  mis 
sionaries  have  been  the  leaders  in  the  efforts  to  suppress 
the  rum  traffic,  and  we  have  said :  "The  vile  rum  in  this 
tropical  climate  is  depopulating  the  country  more  rapidly 
than  famine,  pestilence,  and  war."  10 

The  efforts  to  suppress  what  has  been  styled  "the 
burning  curse  of  Africa"  have  had  the  sanction  of 
several  of  our  chief  executives.  President  Benjamin 
Harrison  said : 

The  men  who  have  gone  to  heathen  lands  with  the  mes 
sage,  "We  seek  not  yours,  but  you,"  have  been  hindered 
by  those  who,  coming  after,  have  reversed  the  message. 
Rum  and  other  corrupting  agencies  come  in  with  our 
boasted  civilization,  and  the  feeble  nations  wither  before 
the  white  man's  vices. 

President  Cleveland  said : 

It  being  the  plain  duty  of  this  government  to  aid  in 
suppressing  the  nefarious  traffic,  impairing  as  it  does  the 
praiseworthy  and  civilizing  efforts  now  in  progress  in  that 
region,  I  recommend  that  an  act  be  passed  prohibiting 
the  sale  of  arms  and  intoxicants  to  natives  in  the  regu 
lated  zone  by  our  citizens. 

10  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Wilbur  F.  Crafts,  "Intoxicating  Drinks  and 
Drugs  in  all  Lands  and  Times." 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  113 

President  McKinley,  discussing  the  need  of  regu 
lating  the  liquor  traffic  in  Africa,  said : 

The  principle  involved  has  the  cordial  sympathy  of 
this  government,  which  in  the  revisionary  negotiations 
advocated  more  drastic  measures,  and  I  would  gladly 
see  its  extension  by  international  agreement  to  the  re 
striction  of  the  liquor  traffic  with  all  uncivilized  peoples. 

President  Roosevelt  said : 

In  dealing  with  the  aboriginal  races  few  things  are 
more  important  than  to  preserve  them  from  the  terrific 
physical  and  moral  degradation  resulting  from  the  liquor 
traffic.  We  are  doing  all  we  can  to  save  our  own  In 
dian  tribes  from  this  evil.  Whenever  by  international 
agreement  this  same  end  can  be  attained  as  regards 
races  where  we  do  not  possess  exclusive  control,  every 
effort  should  be  made  to  bring  it  about. 

At  this  time  a  common  statement  in  newspapers  an 
nouncing  the  departure  of  a  ship  from  Boston  for 
Africa  had  been:  "There  were  five  missionaries  in 
the  cabin,  and  five  hundred  barrels  of  rum  in  the  hold." 
In  treaties  of  1890,  1899,  and  1906,  however,  accord 
ing  to  Dr.  Crafts,  seventeen  nations,  Christian  and 
Mohammedan,  agreed  to  protect  the  natives  of  those 
portions  of  Africa  not  previously  protected  by  Mo 
hammedan  laws  in  the  north  and  by  British  laws  in 
the  south  against  the  white  man's  "firewater."  11 

William  O.  Stoddard,  who  has  been  referred  to  in 

"All  the  foregoing  quotations  on  the  subject  of  the  African 
liquor  traffic  are  taken  from  the  book  by  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Crafts. 


ii4  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

preceding  pages,  had  during  his  three  and  a  half  years 
in  the  White  House  exclusive  charge  of  the  cor 
respondence  of  both  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Lincoln.  On  ac 
count  of  his  duties  in  the  social  affairs  of  the  Execu 
tive  Mansion  he  was  known  as  "Mrs.  Lincoln's  Sec 
retary."  Touching  the  attitude  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Lin 
coln  as  to  liquor  during  their  incumbency  of  the 
White  House,  Mr.  Stoddard  has  this  to  say  in  a  per 
sonal  letter: 

The  temperance  atmosphere  of  the  house  may  be  well 
illustrated  by  an  occurrence  in  the  fall  of  1861.  Some 
gentlemen  in  New  York,  patriotic  and  kindly  and  mind 
ful  of  the  hospitality  requirements  of  the  President's 
mansion,  sent  on  a  fine  collection  of  assorted  and  choice 
and  fascinating  wines  and  liquors.  They  were  duly  de 
livered,  but  Mrs.  Lincoln  at  once  sent  for  me  in  a  state 
of  consternation:  "O  Mr.  Stoddard,  what  shall  I  do? 
Mr.  Lincoln  never  touches  any,  I  never  do.  He  won't 
have  a  drop  of  it  in  the  house."  I  really  had  to  laugh 
at  the  good  lady's  perplexity,  but  could  help  her  out.  She 
was  much  interested  in  some  of  the  military  hospitals, 
visiting  them.  So  I  told  her  to  acknowledge  the  gift  to 
the  kind  givers  with  all  courtesy  and  to  send  the  entire 
consignment  to  the  medical  directors  of  her  pet  hos 
pitals  for  what  good  it  might  do  to  them  or  to  the  pa 
tients.  So  it  all  went.12 

As  President,  Lincoln  approved  of  laws  and  meas 
ures  limiting  and  prohibiting  the   sale  or  giving  of 
liquor   to   soldiers.     In    1861    Generals   Butler,    Mc- 
Clellan,  and  Banks  issued  orders  excluding  all  liquors 
12  Personal  letter  from  Mr.  Stoddard. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  115 

from  their  commands.     On  August  5,  1861,  the  Presi 
dent  signed  an  act  of  Congress  providing 

That  it  shall  not  be  lawful  for  any  person  in  the  Dis 
trict  of  Columbia  to  sell,  give  or  administer  to  any  sol 
dier  or  volunteer  in  the  service  of  the  United  States,  or 
any  person  wearing  the  uniform  of  such  soldier  or  vol 
unteer,  any  spirituous  liquor  or  intoxicating  drink;  and 
such  person  offending  against  the  provisions  of  this  act 
shall  be  deemed  guilty  of  a  misdemeanor  and  upon  con 
viction  thereof,  before  a  magistrate  or  court  having 
criminal  jurisdiction,  shall  be  punished  by  a  fine  of 
$25.00  or  imprisonment  for  thirty  days.13 

On  March  19,  1862,  Lincoln  signed  an  act  of  Con 
gress  making  the  Inspectors-General  of  the  Army  a 
board  of  officers  with  authority  to  prepare  a  list  of 
articles  that  might  be  sold  to  the  officers  and  soldiers 
in  the  volunteer  service — with  this  limitation:  "Pro 
vided  always  that  no  intoxicating  liquors  shall  at  any 
time  be  contained  therein  or  the  sale  of  such  liquors 
be  in  any  way  authorized  by  said  board."  14 

The  advocates  of  the  suppression  of  liquor  in  the 
navy  were  backed  by  the  influence  of  Admiral  Foote 
and  Captains  Dupont,  Hudson,  and  Stringham,  and 
on  July  14,  1862,  President  Lincoln  signed  a  law  pro 
hibiting  the  use  of  liquors  for  beverage  purposes  in 
the  Navy,  which  contained  the  following  provision : 

And  be  it  further  enacted,  That  from  and  after  the 
first  day  of  September,  1862,  the  spirit  ration  of  the  navy 

13  U.  S.  Statutes  at  Large,  Vol.  XII,  C  44. 

14  Ibid.,  Vol.  XII,  C.  47. 


u6  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

no  distilled  spirituous  liquors  shall  be  admitted  on  board 
of  vessels  of  war  except  as  medical  stores,  and  upon 
the  order  and  under  the  control  of  the  medical  officers  of 
such  vessels,  and  to  be  used  only  for  medical  purposes. 
From  and  after  the  said  first  day  of  September  next 
there  shall  be  allowed  and  paid  to  each  person  in  the 
army  now  entitled  to  the  spirit  ration  five  cents  per  day 
in  commutation  and  lieu  thereof,  which  shall  be  in  ad 
dition  to  their  present  pay.15 

On  September  29,  1863,  a  deputation  from  the 
Grand  Division  oi  the  Sons  of  Temperance  of  the  Dis 
trict  of  Columbia  called  upon  President  Lincoln  and 
urged  further  methods  of  suppression  of  the  evils  of 
intemperance  in  the  army.  In  his  response  the  Presi 
dent  said : 

As  a  matter  of  course  it  will  not  be  possible  for  me 
to  make  a  response  coextensive  with  the  address  which 
you  have  presented  to  me.  If  I  were  better  known  than 
I  am,  you  would  not  need  to  be  told  that  in  the  advocacy 
of  the  cause  of  temperance  you  have  a  friend  and  sym 
pathizer  in  me.  When  I  was  a  young  man — long  ago, 
before  the  Sons  of  Temperance  as  an  organization  had 
an  existence — I  in  an  humble  way  made  temperance 
speeches,  and  I  think  I  may  say  that  to  this  day  I  have 
never  by  my  example  belied  what  I  then  said.  In  regard 
to  the  suggestions  which  you  make  for  the  purpose  of  the 
advancement  of  the  cause  of  temperance  in  the  army,  I 
cannot  make  particular  responses  to  them  at  this  time. 
To  prevent  intemperance  in  the  army  is  even  a  part  of 
the  articles  of  war.  It  is  a  part  of  the  law  of  the  land, 

15  U.  S.  Statutes  at  Large,  Vol.  XII,  C.  164. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  117 

and  was  so,  I  presume,  long  ago,  to  dismiss  officers  for 
drunkenness.  I  am  not  sure  that,  consistently  with  the 
public  service,  more  can  be  done  than  has  been  done. 
All,  therefore,  that  I  can  promise  you  is,  if  you  will  be 
pleased  to  furnish  me  with  a  copy  of  your  address,  to 
have  it  submitted  to  the  proper  department  and  have  it 
considered  whether  it  contains  any  suggestions  which 
will  improve  the  cause  of  temperance  and  repress  the 
cause  of  drunkenness  in  the  army  any  better  than  it  is 
already  done.  I  can  promise  no  more  than  that.  I 
think  that  the  reasonable  men  of  the  world  have  long 
since  agreed  that  intemperance  is  one  of  the  greatest  if 
not  the  very  greatest  of  all  evils  amongst  mankind. 
That  is  not  a  matter  of  dispute,  I  believe.  That  the  dis 
ease  exists,  and  that  it  is  a  very  great  one,  is  agreed 
upon  by  all.16 

Perhaps  the  most  serious  mistake  in  the  wonderful 
political  career  of  Abraham  Lincoln  was  that  he  signed 
the  Internal  Revenue  Bill,  which,  by  laying  a  tax  on 
liquors,  did  it  in  such  a  way  that  the  business  of 
making  and  selling  liquors  was  put  under  the  protec 
tion  of  the  national  government. 

The  story  of  the  passage  of  the  bill  and  Lincoln's 
approval  is  of  great  interest.  It  was  in  the  second 
year  of  the  great  war,  and  the  expenditures  of  the  gov 
ernment  were  enormous  in  comparison  with  any  pre 
vious  experience  of  the  Republic.  It  was  also  a  crit 
ical  time  in  military  affairs.  The  Union  armies  had 
met  with  some  serious  defeats.  The  soldiers  were 
unpaid.  The  proposed  Revenue  Bill  exacted  heavy 

"Official  Report  of  Sons  of  Temperance,  1864. 


nS  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

taxes  on  everything  upon  which  such  burdens  could  be 
laid.  The  proposal  to  exact  large  taxes  from  the  mak 
ers  and  sellers  of  liquor  provoked  bitter  debates  in 
both  houses  of  Congress.  Among  the  leaders  of  both 
houses  were  sincere  champions  of  prohibition,  who 
were  divided  on  the  bill. 

Senator  Henry  Wilson,  of  Massachusetts,  made  se 
rious  objection  to  the  bill  because  it  was  a  form  of 
licensing  the  liquor  traffic.  He  said : 

"I  look  upon  the  liquor  trade  as  grossly  immoral, 
carrying  more  evil  than  anything  else  in  this  coun 
try,  and  I  think  the  Federal  government  ought  not  to 
derive  a  revenue  from  the  retailing  of  intoxicating 
drinks," 

He  had  the  foresight  to  prophesy  that  it  would  give 
the  business  of  liquor-selling  a  respectable  position. 

"It  will  be  hailed,"  he  said,  "from  one  end  of  the 
country  to  the  other  by  the  whole  rum-selling  interests 
of  the  country.  ...  It  will  give  immense  power  and 
strength  to  the  liquor-selling  interests." 

Senator  Grimes  of  Iowa  and  Senator  Pomeroy  of 
Kansas  stood  with  Senator  Wilson.  On  the  other 
hand,  Senator  Fessenden  of  Maine,  one  of  the  strong 
est  champions  of  prohibition,  took  the  ground  that  the 
license  of  the  revenue  bill  was  only  nominal,  that  it 
was  really  a  tax,  and  did  not  authorize  any  sale  of  liq 
uor  contrary  to  State  law. 

The  measure  was  introduced  into  the  House  of  Rep 
resentatives  by  Anson  P.  Morrill,  also  of  Maine,  an 
other  champion  of  prohibition.  He  favored  the  bill  be 
cause  it  imposed  a  burden  on  the  liquor  traffic,  saying : 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  119 

"If  you  make  this  tax  so  high  as  to  prohibit  the 
traffic,  which  it  does  not  propose  to  do,  you  can  do  no 
more  valuable  service  to  your  country." 

He  declared  he  would  favor  a  tax  so  high  that  it 
would  wipe  out  the  business,  and  also  that  if  the  sale 
of  intoxicating  liquors  could  be  stopped  "the  country 
would  suffer  less  by  the  war  than  it  has  and  does  from 
the  use  of  intoxicating  liquors." 

Senator  Wilson,  while  strongly  opposed  to  the  li 
cense  idea,  stated  that  he  would  favor  a  tax,  and 
added : 

"I  would  like  to  put  enough  tax  on  it  to  prohibit  the 
manufacture  of  a  single  gallon  of  liquor  in  the  whole 
country.  If  I  had  the  power  to  do  that  and  could  do 
it,  I  should  think  that  I  was  a  public  benefactor." 

While  the  friends  of  prohibition  were  divided  on 
the  support  of  the  Revenue  Law,  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  Chase  pressed  Mr.  Lincoln  in  behalf  of  the 
empty  treasury  and  made  the  plea  that  the  soldiers 
and  sailors  and  their  families  were  in  great  need,  and 
that  money  must  be  furnished.  The  Secretary  and 
many  friends  of  prohibition  treated  it  as  an  emergency 
measure  that  would  be  revoked  as  soon  as  the  war  was 
over.17 

The  testimony  of  Major  Merwin  is  of  interest  and 
value.  In  a  private  letter  he  says: 

There  were  tens  of  thousands  of  soldiers,  faithful,  self- 
denying,  patriotic  and  true,  who  had  not  been  paid  for 

17  Congressional  Record,  May,  1862. 


120  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

months.  Secretary  Chase,  a  most  accomplished  and  suc 
cessful  financier,  had  exhausted  every  resource  of  the 
country.  The  families  of  soldiers,  to  my  certain  knowl 
edge,  were  without  food,  and  some  of  them  without 
shelter.  Napoleon  said,  "Make  the  vices  pay  the  bills," 
and  so  they  came  to  President  Lincoln  and  pleaded  with 
him  to  recoup  the  empty  treasury  by  taxing  liquors.  He 
revolted  at  once.  "Never,"  said  he,  "will  I  consent  to 
that  infamy."  Lincoln,  great  as  he  was  and  good  as  he 
was,  was  not  so  great  as  his  party.  He  had  to  yield  to 
the  pressure — to  my  certain  knowledge  with  the  specific 
agreement  that  it  was  only  and  distinctly  "a  war  meas 
ure,"  to  be  repealed  as  soon  as  the  war  was  over.  I 
know  positively  how  the  great  Lincoln  struggled  days 
over  this  matter,  but  a  person  not  conversant  with  ex 
isting  conditions  can  form  no  idea  of  the  pressure.18 

In  another  letter  Major  Merwin  writes: 

Mr.  Chase  sent  for  me  for  two  consultations  on  the 
matter,  he  was  so  much  afraid  I  should  advise  against 
it.  I  told  Mr.  Lincoln,  "I  dare  not  advise  you  one  way 
or  another.  I  know  the  pressure  for  money  to  pay  the 
troops.  Please  always  stand  on  the  positive  agreement 
that  it  is  to  end  with  the  war."  From  my  personal 
knowledge  that  consent  was  obtained  for  his  signature  to 
the  bill. 

At  the  Anti-Saloon  League  convention  in  Colum 
bus,  Ohio,  a  few  years  ago  Major  Merwin  gave  sim 
ilar  testimony.  He  declared  that  in  the  presence  of 
Senator  Wilson,  Secretary  Chase,  and  himself,  Mr. 
Chase  said: 
18  Personal  letter. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  121 

"Mr.  Lincoln,  we  have  got  to  have  the  resources  of 
evil  as  well  as  good  to  end  this  rebellion,  and  we  must 
have  the  resources.  Mr.  Lincoln,  we  cannot  stand  it 
any  longer." 

Then  Lincoln  said : 

"I  had  rather  lose  my  right  hand  than  to  sign  a 
document  that  shall  perpetuate  the  liquor  traffic,  but 
as  soon  as  the  exigencies  pass  away  I  will  turn  my 
attention  to  the  repeal  of  that  document." 

If  Lincoln  had  survived  the  war,  there  can  be  no 
question  as  to  his  seeking  the  repeal  of  a  law  that  was 
so  shrewdly  manipulated  by  the  liquor  interests  as  to 
give  an  air  of  respectability  to  their  business  and  so 
intrench  it  in  law  and  add  to  their  enormous  financial 
gains. 

It  may  be  well  to  recall  the  fact  that  for  nearly  fifty 
years  before  the  war  there  was  no  Federal  tax  on  the 
liquor  traffic.  There  were  customs  duties  on  imported 
liquors.  While  at  this  time  there  were  no  financial 
burdens  put  upon  the  liquor  business,  it  was  the  period 
of  the  inauguration  of  the  modern  temperance  reform. 
During  that  period  there  had  arisen  the  American 
Temperance  Society,  the  American  Temperance  Un 
ion,  the  Washingtonian  and  Father  Mathew  total  ab 
stinence  crusades,  and  the  beginnings  of  the  fraternal 
temperance  societies  of  which  the  Sons  of  Temperance 
was  the  pioneer.  By  the  close  of  1855  fourteen  States 
were  under  prohibitory  laws.  Agitations  for  both 
abolition  and  temperance  were  before  the  country;  but 
eventually  the  slavery  question  took  the  leading  place 
until  that  issue  was  settled  by  the  war.  After  the  war 


122  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

the  liquor-makers,  who  for  a  time  opposed  the  tax, 
found  that  the  paying  of  so  large  a  share  of  the  ex 
penses  of  the  government  by  the  revenue  gave  them 
place  and  power  and  made  friends  for  them  among 
many  people  who*  were  not  unwilling  to  evade  taxes 
even  at  the  shameful  cost  of  partnership  with  a  busi 
ness  so  destructive  and  dangerous. 

On  the  last  day  of  Lincoln's  life  Major  Merwin 
was  a  guest  at  the  White  House.  He  was  to  go  as  a 
special  messenger  from  the  President  to  Horace 
Greeley  and  others,  to  enlist  their  influence  in  forward 
ing  a  plan  to  employ  colored  troops  in  the  construc 
tion  of  the  Panama  Canal.19  After  Lincoln  had  given 
to  the  Major  the  papers  and  the  necessary  instructions 
he  said : 

"Merwin,  we  have  cleared  up  a  colossal  job.  Slav 
ery  is  abolished.  After  reconstruction  the  next  great 
question  will  be  the  overthrow  and  suppression  of  the 
legalized  liquor  traffic,  and  you  know  that  my  head 
and  my  heart,  my  hand  and  my  purse  will  go  into  the 
contest  for  victory.  In  1842,  less  than  a  quarter  of  a 
century  ago,  I  predicted  that  the  day  would  come  when 
there  would  be  neither  a  slave  nor  a  drunkard  in  the 
land.  I  have  lived  to  see  one  prediction  fulfilled.  I 
hope  to  live  to  see  the  other." 

19  Major  Merwin  was  on  many  occasions  President  Lincoln's 
personal  guest  at  the  White  House,  being  associated  with  him 
in  an  unofficial  and  confidential  capacity,  to  carry  out  important 
commissions.  Such  personal  representatives  are  common  with 
our  Presidents.  As  an  illustration :  the  relation  of  Colonel 
House  to  President  Wilson. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  123 

Major  Merwin  thus  concludes  the  story  of  this  in 
terview  : 

We  shook  hands  and  I  left  for  Philadelphia  and  New 
York.  That  night  the  bullet  of  the  assassin  sent  him  into 
eternal  silence. 

Lincoln's  fame  shines  brightest  as  the  Great  Eman 
cipator.  The  names  of  the  other  noted  advocates  of 
immediate  abolition  do  not  maintain  a  rank  so  high 
as  that  of  the  man  who  put  his  name  to  the  Emanci 
pation  Proclamation.  So  to-day,  in  reviewing  the  rec 
ord  of  the  war  against  liquor,  from  the  obscurity  of 
pioneer  life,  from  the  rudeness  and  drunkenness  of 
the  pioneer  days,  and  through  the  progress  of  the  re 
form  to  the  time  of  its  latest  development,  the  name 
of  Lincoln  shines  out  as  one  of  the  most  potent  in 
fluences.  His  whole  career,  from  the  Kentucky  log 
cabin  to  the  White  House,  gives  him  a  foremost  place 
in  this  great  moral  movement  for  human  welfare. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
LINCOLN  :  AMERICA'S  GREAT-HEART 

Nicolay  and  Hay  thus  sum  up  the  qualities  that 
give  Lincoln  his  place  as  one  of  the  leaders  of  man 
kind  : 

To  qualifications  of  high  literary  excellence  and  easy 
practical  mastery  of  affairs  of  transcendent  importance, 
we  must  add  as  an  explanation  of  his  immediate  and 
world- wide  fame  his  possession  of  certain  moral  quali 
ties  rarely  combined  in  such  high  degree  in  one  indi 
vidual.  His  heart  was  so  tender  that  he  would  dis 
mount  from  his  horse  in  a  forest  to  replace  in  their  nest 
young  birds  which  had  fallen  by  the  roadside ;  he  could 
not  sleep  at  night  if  he  knew  a  soldier  boy  was  under 
sentence  of  death;  he  could  not  even  at  the  bidding  of 
duty  or  policy,  refuse  the  prayer  of  age  or  helplessness 
in  distress.  Children  instinctively  loved  him ;  they  never 
found  his  rugged  features  ugly.  His  sympathies  were 
quick  and  seemingly  unlimited.  .  .  . 

To  a  hope  which  saw  the  Delectable  Mountains  of 
absolute  justice  and  peace  in  the  future,  to  a  faith  that 
God  in  his  own  time  would  give  to  all  men  the  things 
convenient  to  them,  he  added  a  charity  which  embraced 
in  its  deep  bosom  all  the  good  and  the  bad,  all  the  vir 
tues  and  the  infirmities  of  men,  and  a  patience  like  that 

125 


126  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

of  nature,  which  in  its  vast  and  fruitful  activities  knows 
neither  haste  nor  rest.1 

Some  years  ago  the  present  writer  heard  that  Theo 
dore  Roosevelt  had  said  he  thought  Abraham  Lincoln 
was  America's  Great-Heart.  A  note  of  inquiry 
brought  the  following  response  from  the  White 
House,  under  date  of  November  30,  1908: 

MY  DEAR  DR.  MlLNER  I 

Yes,  you  are  entirely  right.  But  I  had  no  idea  that 
what  I  said  was  being  reported.  Great-Heart  is  my  fa 
vorite  character  in  allegory  (which  is,  of  course,  a 
branch  of  fiction,  as  you  say),  just  as  Bunyan's  "Pil 
grim's  Progress"  is  to  my  mind  one  of  the  greatest  books 
that  was  ever  written ;  and  I  think  that  Abraham  Lincoln 
is  the  ideal  Great-Heart  of  Public  life. 

Sincerely  yours, 

THEODORE  ROOSEVELT. 

Great-Heart,  it  will  be  remembered,  is  the  guide  for 
Christiana  and  her  children  in  the  second  part  of  Bun 
yan's  "Pilgrim's  Progress."  He  is  the  brave  but  tender 
guide  who  leads  the  mother  and  children  through  many 
troubles,  trials,  and  sorrows  to  the  Eternal  City.  He 
fights  battles  with  and  triumphs  over  Giants  Grim, 
Bloody  War,  Maul,  Slay-Good,  and  Despair.  He 
fights  and  conquers  Apollyon.  He  leads  those  under 
his  care  safely  through  the  Valley  of  Humiliation,  to 
the  borders  of  the  Valley  of  the  Shadow  of  Death. 
And  after  many  battles  they  cross  the  Enchanted 

1  Nicolay  and  Hay,  "Abraham  Lincoln — A  History,"  Vol.   X, 
P-  354- 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  127 

Ground  to  the  land  of  Beailah,  and  then  enter  the 
Celestial  City. 

When  we  remember  Lincoln's  great-hearted  sym 
pathy  with  humanity;  his  gentle,  beautiful  character; 
his  love  for  mankind,  and  his  horror  at  injustice  and 
cruelty,  the  title  of  Great-Heart  is  most  fitting. 

Lincoln  had  a  horror  of  human  slavery.  In  a  let 
ter  to  his  friend  Joshua  F.  Speed  he  tells  of  seeing  on 
the  boat  from  Louisville  to  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio  ten 
or  a  dozen  slaves  shackled  together  with  irons,  and 
he  says : 

That  sight  was  a  continual  torment  to  me,  and  I  see 
something  like  it  every  time  I  touch  Ohio  or  any  other 
slave  border.  ...  I  confess  I  hate  to  see  the  poor  crea 
tures  hunted  down  and  caught  and  carried  back  to  their 
stripes  and  unrequited  toil ;  but  I  bite  my  lips  and  keep 
quiet.2 

James  Russell  Lowell  wrote  of  him : 

Wise,  steadfast  in  the  strength  of  God  and  true, 

How  beautiful  to  see 

Once  more  a  shepherd  of  mankind,  indeed, 
Who  loved  his  charge  but  never  loved  to  lead — 
One  whose  meek  flock  the  people  joyed  to  be.3 

We  know  how  his  great  heart  was  moved  by  the  suf 
fering  caused  by  the  war,  and  his  sympathy  for  the 
soldiers  was  so  great  that  the  stern  Secretary  of  War, 
Stanton,  charged  him  with  weakening  discipline  by 
his  refusal  to  allow  soldiers  to  be  shot  for  breaches  of 
military  regulations. 

2  Whitney,  "Life  and  Letters,"  Vol.  Ill,  p.  190. 

3  Lowell,  "Commemoration  Ode." 


128  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

What  other  ruler  of  a  great  nation  ever  gave  hours 
of  labor  to  details  of  cases  of  humble  men  under  sen 
tence,  in  order  to  find  excuse  for  their  pardon?  He 
had  a  standing  order  that  persons  making  application 
for  pardon  should  be  admitted  at  once  to  him.  He 
agonized  in  spirit  over  men  condemned  to  death  and 
in  scores  of  cases  sent  the  despatch,  " Suspend  execu 
tion  until  further  orders."  And  the  "further  orders" 
were  never  given. 

When  sharply  criticised  for  his  pardon  of  soldiers, 
he  said : 

"I  am  sick  of  this  butchery  business." 

After  sending  a  pardon  to  a  young  soldier  con 
demned  for  sleeping  on  his  post,  he  said : 

"I  can  not  think  of  going  into  eternity  with  the 
blood  of  that  young  man  on  my  skirts." 

When  the  war  ended,  Lincoln  had  no  thought  of  re 
venge,  but  only  of  how  he  could  best  heal  the  scars  of 
war.  When  it  was  proposed  to  starve  Confederate 
soldiers  because  Union  soldiers  were  being  starved  in 
Southern  prisons,  his  reply  was: 

''Whatever  others  may  say  or  do,  I  never  can  and 
never  will  be  accessory  to  such  treatment  of  human 
beings," 

When  he  was  urged  to  retaliate  for  the  massacre  of 
Negro  soldiers  at  Fort  Pillow  he  said  he  could  not  take 
men  out  and  kill  them  in  cold  blood  for  what  was  done 
by  others,  and  he  added : 

"Once  begun,  I  do  not  know  where  such  a  measure 
would  stop." 

When  victory  came  to  the  Union  cause,  he  said : 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  129 

"We  must  not  sully  victory  with  harshness."  4 

After  Appomattox  some  prominent  persons  insisted 
that  the  leaders  of  the  Rebellion  should  he  dealt  with 
severely,  and  demanded  nothing  less  than  their  exe 
cution.  The  Great-Heart  opened  his  Bible  to  Sam 
uel  II,  and  read  the  story  of  Shimei,  who  cursed  and 
stoned  David  as  he  fled  from  Jerusalem  at  the  rebellion 
of  Absalom.  After  David  was  restored  to  power, 
Shimei  sought  a  pardon.  Abishai,  nephew  of  the 
king,  said  he  should  be  put  to  death  because  he  had 
"cursed  the  Lord's  anointed."  Lincoln  used  the  words 
of  David: 

"What  have  I  to  do  with  you,  ye  sons  of  Zeruiah, 
that  ye  should  this  day  be  adversaries  unto  me?  Shall 
there  any  man  be  put  to  death  this  day?" 

Lincoln  had  great  sympathy  with  soldiers  and  the 
families  of  those  who  gave  up  husbands  or  brothers 
or  sons  to  death  in  the  service  of  their  country.  In 

4  Frederick  Douglass,  at  that  time  the  most  noted  representa 
tive  of  his  race,  called  on  President  Lincoln,  of  which  visit  he 
says :  "I  was  never  more  quickly  or  more  completely  put  at 
ease  in  the  presence  of  a  great  man  than  in  that  of  Abraham 
Lincoln."  Upon  his  visitor's  urging  that  colored  and  white  sol 
diers  should  have  equal  pay  and  promotion,  Lincoln  admitted 
the  justice  of  the  demand.  Douglass,  in  referring  to  the  Presi 
dent's  position  when  retaliation  was  asked  for  colored  prisoners 
killed  by  the  enemy,  says :  "I  shall  never  forget  the  benignant 
expression  of  his  face,  the  tearful  look  of  his  eye  and  the  quiver 
of  his  voice  when  he  deprecated  the  resort  to  retaliatory  meas 
ures.  'Once  begun,'  said  he,  'I  do  not  know  where  such  a  meas 
ure  would  stop.'  He  said  he  could  not  take  men  out  and  kill 
them  in  cold  blood  for  what  was  done  by  others.  If  he  could 
get  hold  of  the  persons  who  were  guilty  of  killing  the  colored 
prisoners  in  cold  blood,  the  case  would  be  different,  but  he  could 
not  kill  the  innocent  for  the  guilty." 

Browne,  "Every  Day  Life  of  Lincoln,"  p.  488. 


130  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

his  letter,  already  noted,  to  Mrs.  Bixby,  the  mother  of 
five  sons  who  had  "died  gloriously  on  the  field  of  bat 
tle,"  Lincoln  expresses  the  wish  that  he  might  be  able 
to  comfort  her  in  her  grief,  saying: 

I  pray  that  our  heavenly  Father  may  assuage  the  an 
guish  of  your  bereavement  and  leave  you  only  the  cher 
ished  memory  of  the  loved  and  lost  and  the  solemn  pride 
that  must  be  yours  to  have  laid  so  costly  a  sacrifice  upon 
the  altar  of  freedom. 

But  while  Lincoln's  tender  nature  and  greatness  of 
heart  were  his  preeminent  qualities,  it  must  not  be 
thought  that  he  lacked  courage  and  iron  resolution  in 
carrying  out  his  convictions  in  behalf  of  truth  and  jus 
tice.  In  emergencies  he  proved  himself  a  man  of  the 
firmest  decision  of  character,  able  to  stand  erect  and 
face  the  greatest  of  storms.  He  proved  in  his  own 
person  and  by  the  record  of  his  life  that 

The  bravest  are  the  tenderest, 
The  loving  are  the  daring. 

After  his  election  to  the  Presidency  there  appeared 
to  have  been  a  change  of  feeling  even  among  some 
of  the  men  of  prominence  who  had  supported  him. 
They  feared  that  he  had  not  sufficient  strength  of  char 
acter  to<  face  the  mighty  conflict  that  was  impending. 

In  reply  to  a  letter  of  inquiry  from  Senator  Henry 
Wilson  of  Massachusetts,  Herndon  wrote  a  remark 
able  letter  on  December  21,  1860,  in  which  he  said: 

Lincoln  is  a  man  of  heart — aye,  as  gentle  as  a  woman's 
and  as  tender- — but  he  has  a  will  as  strong  as  iron.  He 
therefore  loves  all  mankind,  hates  slavery  and  every  form 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  131 

of  despotism.  Put  these  together — love  for  the  slave 
and  a  determination,  a  will  that  justice  strong  and  un 
yielding  shall  be  done  when  he  has  the  right  to  act,  and 
you  can  form  your  own  conclusion.  Lincoln  will  fail 
here,  namely,  if  a  question  of  political  economy — if  any 
question  conies  up  which  is  doubtful,  questionable,  which 
no  man  can  demonstrate,  then  his  friends  can  rule  him; 
but  when  on  Justice,  Right,  Liberty,  the  Government, 
the  Constitution  and  the  Union,  then  you  may  all  stand 
aside.  He  will  rule  then,  and  no  man  can  move  him — 
no  set  of  men  can  do  it.  There  is  no  failure  here.  This 
is  Lincoln,  and  you  mark  my  prediction.  You  and  I 
must  keep  the  people  right.  God  will  keep  Lincoln 
right* 

Wilson  still  had  doubts,  but  years  later  he  admitted 
that  these  predictions  had  been  fulfilled  to  the  letter. 

During  the  war  it  was  almost  the  daily  custom  of 
the  President  to  visit  the  Washington  hospitals.  He 
gave  much  of  his  vitality  in  the  midst  of  his  mighty 
cares  to  this  sacrificial  service.  One  of  the  army  sur 
geons  said : 

'There  was  no  medicine  equal  to  the  cheerfulness 
his  visit  inspired,  but  its  effect  upon  him  was  sad 
dening." 

One  of  the  remarkable  organizations  connected  with 
the  Civil  War  was  the  "United  States  Christian  Com 
mission,"  which  not  only  ministered  to  the  material 
wants  of  the  soldiers  but  had  also  a  distinctive  work 
of  spiritual  ministry.  It  was  largely  under  the  direc 
tion  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association,  and 

6  "Lincoln  and  Herndon,"  p.  282. 


1 32  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

the  work  now  going  on  in  the  World's  War  is  its  fuller 
development.  In  the  hall  of  the  National  House  of 
Representatives  on  January  29,  1865,  the  Commission 
held  a  public  anniversary  meeting.  A  great  throng  at 
tended  and  listened  to  reports  of  the  work  and  a  num 
ber  of  addresses. 

The  President  and  Mrs.  Lincoln,  members  of  the 
Cabinet  and  the  Supreme  Court,  foreign  ministers,  of 
ficers  of  the  Army  and  Navy,  and  many  Congressmen 
and  leading  citizens  were  in  attendance.  Lincoln  was 
deeply  interested  in  the  reports  of  those  who  had  min 
istered  to  the  sick  and  wounded  on  the  battle-fields  and 
in  the  hospitals. 

It  was  noted  by  one  who  sat  near  the  President  that 
when  Philip  Phillips  sang  the  song  entitled  "Your 
Mission"  Mr.  Lincoln  was  deeply  moved  and  tears  ran 
down  his  face.  Secretary  of  State  Seward,  who1  pre 
sided  over  the  meeting,  received  this  note  written  on 
one  of  the  programs: 

Near  the  close  let  us  have  "Your  Mission"  repeated 
by  Mr.  Phillips.  Don't  say  I  called  for  it. 

A.  LINCOLN. 

The  following  verse  may  explain  his  emotion : 

If   you   cannot   in    the   conflict 

Prove  yourself   a  soldier  true, 
If,  where  fire  and  smoke  are  thickest 

There's  no  work  for  you  to  do; 
When  the  battle-field  is  silent, 

You  can  go  with  careful  tread, 
You  can  bear  away  the  wounded, 

You  can   cover  up   the  dead.6 

6  "Annals  of  the  United  States  Christian  Commission,"  pp.  216, 
256. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  133 

It  would  have  been  indeed  wonderful  if  this  man, 
so  full  of  sympathy  for  his  suffering  fellow-men,  had 
not  had  his  soul  stirred  by  the  horrors  of  the  drink 
habit  and  the  drink  traffic.  While  the  facts  as  to  his 
relations  to  the  temperance  reform  were  only  imper 
fectly  recorded  at  the  time,  they  show  that  the  cause 
had  a  large  place  in  his  mind  and  heart,  and  in  every 
portion  of  his  life  he  gave  his  testimony  against  the 
evils  of  drink.  There  is  no  need  of  any  strained  ef 
fort  to  magnify  his  interest  in  the  temperance  cause 
and  his  work  in  its  behalf.  We  have  given  this  rec 
ord: 

He  was  a  lifelong  abstainer;  his  first  effort  at  liter 
ary  composition  was  an  essay  on  temperance;  his  first 
great  speech,  on  Washington's  birthday  in  1842,  was 
in  behalf  of  total  abstinence  and  the  reform  of  drunk 
ards;  his  first  public  identification  with  a  great  moral 
question  was  his  work  for  the  temperance  reform. 

There  are  on  record  many  incidents  that  illustrate 
Lincoln's  sense  of  the  danger  of  drink  and  his  interest 
in  saving  men  from  its  evil  power.  In  the  days  of 
the  world's  greatest  war  every  effort  was  made  to  pro 
tect  the  young  men  in  armies  and  navies  from  the 
evils  of  drink, — efforts  that  were  perhaps  not  so  per 
sonal  as  the  one  made  in  the  following  story  told  by 
a  veteran  of  the  Civil  War  at  a  Lincoln  meeting.  It 
shows  Lincoln's  abhorrence  of  the  saloon  and  the 
drink  habit : 

"We  have  heard  what  Lincoln  has  done  for  all  of  us; 
I  want  to  tell  what  he  did  for  me,"  said  the  veteran. 
"I  was  a  private  in  one  of  the  Western  regiments  that 


134  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

arrived  first  in  Washington  after  the  call  for  75,000. 
We  were  marching  through  the  city  amid  great  crowds 
of  cheering  people,  and  then,  after  going  into  camp, 
were  given  leave  to  see  the  town.  Like  many  other 
of  our  boys  the  saloon  or  tavern  was  the  first  thing  we 
hit.  With  my  comrade  I  was  just  about  to  go  into 
the  door  of  one  of  these  places  when  a  hand  was  laid 
upon  my  arm,  and,  looking  up,  there  was  President 
Lincoln  from  his  great  height  above  me,  regarding 
me,  a  mere  lad,  with  those  kindly  eyes  and  pleasant 
smile.  I  almost  dropped  with  surprise  and  bashful- 
ness,  but  he  held  out  his  hand,  and  as  I  took  it  he  shook 
hands  in  strong  Western  fashion,  and  said :  'I  don't 
like  to  see  our  uniform  going  into  these  places,'  That 
was  all  he  said.  He  turned  immediately  and  walked 
away,  and  we  passed  on.  We  would  not  have  gone 
into  that  tavern  for  all  the  wealth  of  Washington  City. 
And  this  is  what  Abraham  Lincoln  did  then  and  there 
for  me.  He  fixed  me  so  that  whenever  I  go  near  a 
saloon  and  in  any  way  think  of  entering,  his  words  and 
face  come  back  to-  me.  That  experience  has  been  a 
means  of  salvation  to  my  life.  To-day  I  hate  the  sa 
loon  and  have  hated  it  ever  since  I  heard  those  words 
from  that  great  man."  7 

History  shows  that  a  number  of  our  Presidents  have 
said  and  done  some  things  favorable  to  the  temperance 
reform;  but  Lincoln,  by  his  own  lifelong  personal  ex 
ample,  and  by  his  aggressive  efforts  in  actual  work  as 
a  public  advocate  in  trying  to  protect  the  army  from 
drink,  did  more  than  any  other  occupant  of  the  presi- 
7  Dr.  John  Talmaclge  Bergen,  The  Interior,  February  n,  1909. 


LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR  135 

dential  chair.  It  is  certain  that  there  is  no  record  of  a 
single  act  of  Lincoln's  life,  or  of  a  single  word  that  he 
ever  spoke  or  wrote,  which  even  suggests  the  slightest 
sympathy  with  any  form  of  the  drink  habit  or  any  fa 
voring  recognition  of  the  liquor  traffic. 

Lincoln  had  indeed  a  prophetic  vision  of  the  end  of 
slavery,  and  also  of  the  end  of  drink  bondage,  when 
he  said : 

When  the  victory  shall  be  complete — when  there  shall 
neither  be  a  slave  nor  a  drunkard  on  earth — how  proud 
the  title  of  that  land  which  may  truly  claim  to  be  the 
birthplace  and  the  cradle  of  both  those  revolutions  that 
shall  have  ended  in  victory.  How  nobly  distinguished 
that  people  who  shall  have  planted  and  nurtured  to  ma 
turity  both  the  political  and  moral  freedom  of  their 
species. 

This  keen  foreknowledge  o>f  what  was  to  be  would 
justify,  even  aside  from  other  elements  of  his  char 
acter  and  accomplishment,  John  Hay's  estimate  of  his 
worth  to  his  country  and  to  humanity : 

As,  in  spite  of  some  rudeness,  Republicanism  is  the 
sole  hope  of  a  sick  world,  so  Lincoln  with  all  his  foibles 
is  the  greatest  character  since  Christ. 

And  there  can  be  no  better  summary  of  the  real 
character  of  America's  Great-Heart  than  this  by  the 
poet  Markham : 

But  most  he  read  the  heart  of  common  man, 
Scanned  all  its  secret  pages  stained  with  tears, 
Saw  all  the  guile,  saw  all  the  piteous  pains, 
And  yet  could  keep  the  smile  about  his  lips, 


136  LINCOLN  AND  LIQUOR 

Love  and  forgive,  see  all  and  pardon  all; 
His  only  fault,  the  fault  that  some  of  old 
Laid  even  on  God — that  he  was  ever  wont 
To  bend  the  law  to  let  his  mercy  out. 8 

8  Edwin  Markham,  "The  Coming  of  Lincoln." 


AN  ADDRESS 

DELIVERED  BEFORE 
SPRINGFIELD  WASHINGTONIAN 

TEMPERANCE  SOCIETY, 

AT  THE  SECOND  PRESBYTERIAN  CHURCH, 

— ON  THE — 
220  DAY  OF  FEBRUARY,  1842. 

— BY- 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN,  ESQ. 

ANNIVERSARY  OF  THE  SPRINGFIELD  WASH 
INGTONIAN  TEMPERANCE  SOCIETY 

SANGAMO  JOURNAL,   FEB.   25,    1842. —  (EDITORIAL.) 

This  anniversary,  the  first  of  the  kind  celebrated  in  this  county, 
passed  off  well.  A  procession  was  formed  at  n  o'clock,  at  the 
Methodist  Church,  under  direction  of  Col.  B.  S.  Clement  as 
Chief  Marshal,  and,  escorted  by  the  beautiful  company  of 
Sangamo  Guards,  under  command  of  Capt.  E.  D.  Baker, 
marched  through  some  of  the  principal  streets  of  the  .city,  and 
reached  the  Second  Presbyterian  Church  at  12  o'clock.  The 
address,  delivered  by  Mr.  Lincoln,  in  our  opinion,  was  excellent. 
The  Society  directed  it  to  be  printed.  The  singing  delighted 
the  immense  crowd.  Several  pieces  were  a  second  time  called 
for  and  repeated.  Indeed,  the  whole  was  a  most  happy  affair. 
The  weather  was  delightful. 

137 


APPENDIX 
ADDRESS 

Although  the  Temperance  Cause  has  been  in  progress 
for  near  twenty  years,  it  is  apparent  to  all,  that  it  is  just 
now  being  crowned  with  a  degree  of  success  hitherto  un 
paralleled. 

The  list  of  its  friends  is  daily  swelled  by  the  additions 
of  fifties,  of  hundreds,  and  of  thousands.  The  cause 
itself  seems  suddenly  transformed  from  a  cold  abstract 
theory,  to  a  living,  breathing,  active  and  powerful  chief 
tain,  going  forth  "conquering  and  to  conquer."  The  cita 
dels  of  his  great  adversary  are  daily  being  stormed  and 
dismantled ;  his  temples  and  his  altars,  where  the  rites 
of  his  idolatrous  worship  have  long  been  performed,  and 
where  human  sacrifices  have  long  been  wont  to  be  made, 
are  daily  desecrated  and  deserted.  The  trump  of  the 
conqueror's  fame  is  sounding  from  hill  to  hill,  from  sea 
to  sea,  and  from  land  to  land,  and  calling  millions  to  his 
standard  at  a  blast. 

For  this  new  and  splendid  success,  we  heartily  rejoice. 
That,  that  success  is  so  much  greater  now,  than  hereto 
fore,  is  doubtless  owing  to  rational  causes ;  and  if  we 
would  have  it  continue,  we  shall  do  well  to  inquire  what 
those  causes  are. 

The  warfare  heretofore  waged  against  the  demon  in 
temperance  has,  somehow  or  other,  been  erroneous. 
Either  the  champions  engaged,  or  the  tactics  they 

139 


140  APPENDIX 

adopted,  have  not  been  the  most  proper.  These  cham 
pions  for  the  most  part  have  been  preachers,  lawyers  and 
hired  agents,  between  these  and  the  mass  of  mankind, 
there  is  a  want  of  approachability,  if  the  term  be  admis 
sible,  partially  at  least,  fatal  to  their  success.  They  are 
supposed  to  have  no  sympathy  of  feeling  or  interest,  with 
those  very  persons  whom  it  is  their  object  to  convince 
and  persuade. 

And  again,  it  is  so  easy  and  so  common  to  ascribe  mo 
tives  to  men  of  these  classes,  other  than  those  they  pro 
fess  to  act  upon.  The  preacher  it  is  said,  advocates  tem 
perance  because  he  is  a  fanatic,  and  desires  a  union  of 
the  church  and  State ;  the  lawyer  from  his  pride,  and 
vanity  of  hearing  himself  speak ;  and  the  hired  agent  for 
his  salary. 

But  when  one,  who  has  long  been  known  as  a  victim 
of  intemperance,  bursts  the  fetters  that  have  bound  him, 
and  appears  before  his  neighbors  "clothed  and  in  his 
right  mind/'  a  redeemed  specimen  of  long  lost  human 
ity,  and  stands  up  with  tears  of  joy  trembling  in  eyes,  to 
tell  of  the  miseries  once  endured,  now  to  be  endured  no 
more  forever ;  of  his  once  naked  and  starving  children, 
now  clad  and  fed  comfortably;  of  a  wife,  long  weighed 
down  with  woe,  weeping  and  a  broken  heart,  now  re 
stored  to  health,  happiness  and  a  renewed  affection ;  and 
how  easily  it  is  all  done,  once  it  is  resolved  to  be  done  ; 
how  simple  his  language,  there  is  a  logic  and  an  elo 
quence  in  it,  that  few  with  human  feelings  can  resist. 
They  cannot  say  that  he  desires  a  union  of  church  and 
State,  for  he  is  not  a  church  member;  they  cannot  say 
he  is  vain  of  hearing  himself  speak,  for  his  whole  de 
meanor  shows  he  would  gladly  avoid  speaking  at  all; 
they  cannot  say  he  speaks  for  pay  for  he  receives  none, 
and  asks  for  none.  Nor  can  his  sincerity  in  any  way  be 


APPENDIX  141 

doubted;  or  his  sympathy  for  those  he  would  persuade 
to  imitate  his  example,  be  denied. 

In  my  judgment,  it  is  to  the  battles  of  this  new  class 
of  champions  that  our  late  success  is  greatly,  perhaps 
chiefly,  owing.  But,  had  the  old-school  champions  them 
selves  been  of  the  most  wise  selecting,  was  their  sys 
tem  of  tactics  the  most  judicious?  It  seems  to  me  it  was 
not.  Too  much  denunciation  against  dram-sellers  and 
dram-drinkers  was  indulged  in.  This,  I  think,  was  both 
impolitic  and  unjust.  It  was  impolitic,  because  it  is  not 
much  in  the  nature  of  man  to  be  driven  to  anything; 
still  less  to  be  driven  about  that,  which  is  exclusively  his 
own  business ;  and  least  of  all,  where  such  driving  is  to 
be  submitted  to,  at  the  expense  of  pecuniary  interest,  or 
burning  appetite.  When  the  dram-seller  and  drinker 
were  incessantly  told,  not  in  the  accents  of  entreaty  and 
persuasion,  diffidently  addressed  by  erring  man  to  an  err 
ing  brother;  but  in  the  thundering  tones  of  anathema  and 
denunciation  with  which  the  lordly  judge  often  groups 
together  all  the  crimes  of  the  felon's  life,  and  thrusts 
them  in  his  face  just  ere  he  passes  sentence  of  death 
upon  him,  that  they  were  the  authors  of  all  the  vice  and 
misery  and  crime  in  the  land;  that  they  were  the  manu 
facturers  and  material  of  all  the  thieves  and  robbers  and 
murderers  that  infest  the  earth ;  that  their  houses  were 
the  workshops  of  the  devil ;  and  that  their  persons  should 
be  shunned  by  all  the  good  and  virtuous,  as  moral  pes 
tilences.  I  say,  when  they  were  told  all  this,  and  in  this 
way,  it  is  not  wonderful  that  they  were  slow,  very  slow, 
to  acknowledge  the  truth  of  such  denunciations,  and  to 
join  the  ranks  of  their  denouncers,  in  a  hue  and  cry 
against  themselves. 

To  have  expected  them  to  do  otherwise  than  they  did 
— to  have  expected  them  not  to  meet  denunciation  with 


142  APPENDIX 

denunciation,  crimination  with  crimination,  and  anath 
ema  with  anathema — was  to  expect  a  reversal  of  human 
nature,  which  is  God's  decree  and  can  never  be  reversed. 

When  the  conduct  of  men  is  designed  to  be  influenced, 
persuasion,  kind  unassuming  persuasion,  should  ever  be 
adopted.  It  is  an  old  and  a  true  maxim,  "that  a  drop  of 
honey  catches  more  flies  than  a  gallon  of  gall."  So  with 
men.  If  you  would  win  a  man  to  your  cause,  first  con 
vince  him  that  you  are  his  sincere  friend.  Therein  is 
a  drop  of  honey  that  catches  his  heart,  which,  say  what 
he  will,  is  the  great  high  road  to  his  reason,  and  which, 
when  once  gained,  you  will  find  but  little  trouble  in  con 
vincing  his  judgment  of  the  justice  of  your  cause,  if  in 
deed  that  cause  really  be  a  just  one.  On  the  contrary, 
assume  to  dictate  to  his  judgment,  or  to  command  his  ac 
tion,  or  to  mark  him  as  one  to  be  shunned  and  despised, 
and  he  will  retreat  within  himself,  close  all  the  avenues 
to  his  head  and  his  heart;  and  though  your  cause  be 
naked  truth  itself,  transformed  to  the  heaviest  lance, 
harder  than  steel,  and  sharper  than  steel  can  be  made,  and 
though  you  throw  it  with  more  than  herculean  force  and 
precision,  you  shall  be  no  more  able  to  pierce  him  than 
to  penetrate  the  hard  shell  of  a  tortoise  with  a  rye-straw. 
Such  is  man,  and  so  must  he  be  understood  by  those  who 
would  lead  him,  even  to  his  own  best  interests. 

On  this  point,  the  Washingtonians  greatly  excel  the 
temperance  advocates  of  former  times.  Those  whom 
they  desire  to  convince  and  persuade  are  their  old  friends 
and  companions.  They  know  they  are  not  demons,  nor 
even  the  worst  of  men ;  they  know  that  generally  they  are 
kind,  generous  and  charitable,  even  beyond  the  example 
of  their  more  staid  and  sober  neighbors.  They  are  prac 
tical  philanthropists ;  and  they  glow  with  a  generous  and 
brotherly  zeal,  that  mere  theorizers  are  incapable  of  feel- 


APPENDIX  143 

ing.  Benevolence  and  charity  possess  their  hearts  en 
tirely ;  and  out  of  the  abundance  of  their  hearts,  their 
tongues  give  utterance,  "Love  through  all  their  actions 
run,  and  all  their  words  are  mild;"  in  this  spirit  they 
speak  and  act,  and  in  the  same,  they  are  heard  and  re 
garded.  And  when  such  is  the  temper  of  the  advocate, 
and  such  of  the  audience,  no  good  cause  can  be  unsuc 
cessful.  But  I  have  said  that  denunciations  against 
dram-sellers  and  dram-drinkers  are  unjust,  as  well  as 
impolitic.  Let  us  see. 

I  have  not  enquired  at  what  period  of  time  the  use 
of  intoxicating  liquors  commenced ;  nor  is  it  important 
to  know.  It  is  sufficient  that  to  all  of  us  who  now  in 
habit  the  world,  the  practice  of  drinking  them  is  just  as 
old  as  the  world  itself — that  is,  we  have  seen  the  one  just 
as  long  as  we  have  seen  the  other.  When  all  such  of  us 
as  have  now  reached  the  years  of  maturity  first  opened 
our  eyes  upon  the  stage  of  existence,  we  found  intoxicat 
ing  liquor ;  recognized  by  everybody,  used  by  everybody, 
repudiated  by  nobody.  It  commonly  entered  into  the 
first  draught  of  the  infant,  and  the  last  draught  of  the 
dying  man.  From  the  sideboard  of  the  parson,  down  to 
the  ragged  pocket  of  the  houseless  loafer,  it  was  con 
stantly  found.  Physicians  prescribed  it  in  this,  that  and 
the  other  disease;  Government  provided  it  for  soldiers 
and  sailors ;  and  to  have  a  rolling  or  raising,  a  husking 
or  "hoe-down"  anywhere  about,  without  it  was  posi 
tively  itnsufferable.  So  too,  it  was  everywhere  a  re 
spectable  article  of  manufacture  and  of  merchandise. 
The  making  of  it  was  regarded  as  an  honorable  liveli 
hood,  and  he  could  make  most,  was  the  most  enterprising 
and  respectable.  Large  and  small  manufactories  of  it 
were  everywhere  erected,  in  which  all  the  earthly  goods 
of  their  owners  were  invested.  Wagons  drew  it  from 


144  APPENDIX 

town  to  town ;  boats  bore  it  from  clime  to  clime,  and  the 
winds  wafted  it  from  nation  to  nation ;  and  merchants 
bought  and  sold  it,  by  wholesale  and  retail,  with  pre 
cisely  the  same  feelings  on  the  part  of  the  seller,  buyer 
and  by-stander,  as  are  felt  at  the  selling  and  buying  of 
plows,  beef,  bacon,  or  any  other  of  the  real  necessaries 
of  life.  Universal  public  opinion  not  only  tolerated,  but 
recognized  and  adopted  its  use. 

It  is  true,  that  even  then,  it  was  known  and  acknowl 
edged  that  many  were  greatly  injured  by  it;  but  none 
seemed  to  think  the  injury  arose  from  the  use  of  a  bad 
thing,  but  from  the  abuse  of  a  very  good  thing.  The 
victims  of  it  were  to  be  pitied,  and  compassionated,  just 
as  are  the  heirs  of  consumption,  and  other  hereditary  dis 
eases.  Their  failing  was  treated  as  a  misfortune,  and 
not  as  a  crime,  or  even  as  a  disgrace. 

If  then,  what  I  have  been  saying  is  true,  is  it  wonder 
ful  that  some  should  think  and  act  now  as  all  thought 
and  acted  twenty  years  ago,  and  is  it  just  to  assail,  con 
demn,  or  despise  them  for  doing  so  ?  The  universal 
sense  of  mankind,  on  any  subject,  is  an  argument,  or  at 
least  an  influence  not  easily  overcome.  The  success  of 
the  argument  in  favor  of  the  existence  of  an  over-rul 
ing  Providence,  mainly  depends  upon  that  sense;  and 
men  ought  not,  in  justice,  to  be  denounced  for  yielding 
to  it  in  any  case,  or  giving  it  up  slowly,  especially  when 
they  are  backed  by  interest,  fixed  habits,  or  burning  ap 
petites. 

Another  error,  as  it  seems  to  me,  into  which  the  old 
reformers  fell,  was  the  position  that  all  habitual  drunk 
ards  were  utterly  incorrigible,  and  therefore,  must  be 
turned  adrift,  and  damned  without  remedy,  in  order  that 
the  grace  of  temperance  might  abound,  to  the  temperate 
then,  and  to  all  mankind  some  hundreds  of  years  there- 


APPENDIX  145 

after.  There  is  in  this,  something  so  repugnant  to  hu 
manity,  so  uncharitable,  so  cold  blooded  and  feelingless, 
that  it  never  did,  nor  never  can  enlist  the  enthusiasm  of 
a  popular  cause.  We  could  not  love  the  man  who  taught 
it — we  could  not  hear  him  with  patience.  The  heart 
could  not  throw  open  its  portals  to  it,  the  generous  man 
could  not  adopt  it,  it  could  not  mix  with  his  blood.  It 
looked  so  fiendishly  selfish,  so  like  throwing  fathers  and 
brothers  overboard,  to  lighten  the  boat  for  our  security 
— that  the  noble-minded  shrank  from  the  manifest  mean 
ness  of  the  thing.  And  besides  this,  the  benefits  of  a 
reformation  to  be  effected  by  such  a  system  were  too  re 
mote  in  point  of  time  to  warmly  engage  many  in  its  be 
half.  Few  can  be  induced  to  labor  exclusively  for  pos 
terity  ;  and  none  will  do  it  enthusiastically.  Posterity  has 
done  nothing  for  us ;  and  theorize  on  it  as  we  may,  prac 
tically  we  shall  do  very  little  for  it,  unless  we  are  made 
to  think  we  are,  at  the  same  time,  doing  something  for 
ourselves. 

What  an  ignorance  of  human  nature  does  it  exhibit, 
to  ask  or  expect  a  whole  community  to  rise  up  and  labor 
for  the  temporal  happiness  of  others,  after  themselves 
shall  be  consigned  to  the  dust,  a  majority  of  which  com 
munity  takes  no  pains  whatever  to  secure  their  own  eter 
nal  welfare  at  no  greater  distant  day?  Great  distance 
in  either  time  or  space  has  wonderful  power  to  lull  and 
render  quiescent  the  human  mind.  Pleasures  to  be  en 
joyed,  or  pains  to  be  endured  after  we  shall  be  dead  and 
gone,  are  but  little  regarded,  even  in  our  own  cases,  and 
much  less  in  the  cases  of  others. 

Still  in  addition  to  this,  there  is  something  so  ludicrous, 
in  promises  of  good,  or  threats  of  evil,  a  great  way  off, 
as  to  render  the  whole  subject  with  which  they  are  con 
nected  easily  turned  into  ridicule.  "Better  lay  down  that 
spade  you're  stealing,  Paddy — if  you  don't,  you'll  pay  for 


146  APPENDIX 

it  at  the  day  of  judgment."  "Be  the  powers,  if  ye'll 
credit  me  so  long  I'll  take  another  jist." 

By  the  Washingtonians  this  system  of  consigning  the 
habitual  drunkard  to  hopeless  ruin  is  repudiated.  They 
adopt  a  more  enlarged  philanthropy,  they  go  for  present 
as  well  as  future  good.  They  labor  for  all  now  living, 
as  well  as  hereafter  to  live.  They  teach  hope  to  all — de 
spair  to  none.  As  applying  to  their  cause,  they  deny  the 
doctrine  of  unpardonable  sin,  as  in  Christianity  it  is 
taught,  so  in  this  they  teach — 

"While  the  lamp  holds  out  to  burn, 
The  vilest  sinner  may  return." 

And,  what  is  a  matter  of  the  most  profound  congratula 
tion,  they,  by  experiment  upon  experiment,  and  example 
upon  example,  prove  the  maxim  to  be  no  less  true  in  the 
one  case  than  in  the  other.  On  every  hand  we  behold 
those  who  but  yesterday  were  the  chief  of  sinners,  now 
the  chief  apostles  of  the  cause.  Drunken  devils  are  cast 
out  by  ones,  by  sevens,  by  legions ;  and  their  unfortunate 
victims,  like  the  poor  possessed,  who  was  redeemed  from 
his  long  and  lonely  wanderings  in  the  tombs,  are  publish 
ing  to  the  ends  of  the  earth  how  great  things  have  been 
done  for  them. 

To  these  new  champions,  and  this  new  system  of  tac 
tics,  our  late  success  is  mainly  owing;  and  to  them  we 
must  mainly  look  for  the  final  consummation.  The  ball 
is  now  rolling  gloriously  on,  and  none  are  so  able  as  they 
to  increase  its  speed  and  its  bulk — to  add  to  its  momen 
tum,  and  its  magnitude — even  though  unlearned  in  let 
ters,  for  this  task  none  are  so  well  educated.  To  fit  them 
for  this  work  they  have  been  taught  in  the  true  school. 
They  have  been  in  that  gulf  from  which  they  would  teach 
others  the  means  of  escapes.  They  have  passed  that 


APPENDIX  14? 

prison  wall  which  others  have  long  declared  impassable ; 
and  who  that  has  not,  shall  dare  to  weigh  opinions  with 
them  as  to  the  mode  of  passing? 

But  if  it  be  true,  as  I  have  insisted,  that  those  who  have 
suffered  by  intemperance  personally,  and  have  reformed, 
are  the  most  powerful  and  efficient  instruments  to  push 
the  reformation  to  ultimate  success,  it  does  not  follow, 
that  those  who  have  not  suffered,  have  no  part  left  them 
to  perform.  Whether  or  not  the  world  would  be  vastly 
benefited  by  a  total  and  final  banishment  from  it  of  all 
intoxicating  drinks,  seems  to  me  not  now  an  open  ques 
tion.  Three-fourths  of  mankind  confess  the  affirmative 
with  their  tongues,  and,  I  believe,  all  the  rest  acknowl 
edge  it  in  their  hearts. 

Ought  any,  then,  to  refuse  their  aid  in  doing  what  good 
the  good  of  the  whole  demands?  Shall  he,  who  cannot 
do  much,  be,  for  that  reason  excused  if  he  do  nothing? 
"But,"  says  one,  "what  good  can  I  do  by  signing  the 
pledge?  I  never  drink,  even  without  signing."  This 
question  has  already  been  asked  and  answered  more  than 
a  million  of  times.  Let  it  be  answered  once  more.  For 
the  man  to  suddenly,  or  in  any  other  way,  to  break  off 
from  the  use  of  drams,  who  has  indulged  in  them  for  a 
long  course  of  years,  and  until  his  appetite  for  them  has 
grown  ten  or  a  hundred  fold  stronger,  and  more  craving, 
than  any  natural  appetite  can  be,  requires  a  most  power 
ful  moral  effort.  In  such  an  undertaking  he  needs  every 
moral  support  and  influence,  that  can  possibly  be  brought 
to  his  aid,  and  thrown  around  him.  And  not  only  so, 
but  every  moral  prop  should  be  taken  from  whatever  ar 
gument  might  rise  in  his  mind  to  lure  him  to  his  back 
sliding.  When  he  casts  his  eyes  around  him,  he  should 
be  able  to  see  all  that  he  respects,  all  that  he  admires,  all 
that  he  loves,  kindly  and  anxiously  pointing  him  onward, 


148  APPENDIX 

and  none  beckoning  him  back  to  his  former  miserable 
''wallowing  in  the  mire." 

But  it  is  said  by  some  that  men  will  think  and  act  for 
themselves ;  that  none  will  disuse  spirits  or  anything  else 
because  his  neighbors  do ;  and  that  moral  influence  is  not 
that  powerful  engine  contended  for.  Let  us  examine 
this.  Let  me  ask  the  man  who  could  maintain  this  posi 
tion  most  stiffly,  what  compensation  he  will  accept  to  go 
to  church  some  Sunday  and  sit  during  the  sermon  with 
his  wife's  bonnet  upon  his  head?  Not  a  trifle,  I'll  ven 
ture.  And  why  not  ?  There  would  be  nothing  irreligious 
in  it ;  nothing  immoral,  nothing  uncomfortable — then  why 
not  ?  Is  it  not  because  there  would  be  something  egregi- 
ously  unfashionable  in  it?  Then  it  is  the  influence  of 
fashion ;  and  what  is  the  influence  of  fashion,  but  the  in 
fluence  that  other  people's  actions  have  on  our  own  ac 
tions — the  strong  inclination  each  of  us  feels  to  do  as  we 
see  all  our  neighbors  do  ?  Nor  in  the  influence  of  fash 
ion  confined  to  any  particular  thing  or  class  of  things. 
It  is  just  as  strong  on  one  subject  as  another.  Let  us 
make  it  as  unfashionable  to  withhold  our  names  from  the 
temperance  pledge,  as  for  husbands  to  wear  their  wives' 
bonnets  to  church,  and  instances  will  be  just  as  rare  in 
the  one  case  as  the  other. 

"But,"  say  some,  "we  are  no  drunkards  and  we  shall 
not  acknowledge  ourselves  such,  by  joining  a  reformed 
drunkard's  society,  whatever  our  influence  might  be." 
Surely  no  Christian  will  adhere  to  this  objection. 

If  they  believe  as  they  profess,  that  Omnipotence  con 
descended  to  take  on  himself  the  form  of  sinful  man, 
and,  as  such,  to  die  an  ignominious  death  for  their  sakes, 
surely  they  will  not  refuse  submission  to  the  infinitely 
lesser  condescension,  for  the  temporal,  and  perhaps  eter 
nal  salvation  of  a  large,  erring,  and  unfortunate  class  of 


APPENDIX  149 

their  fellow  creatures.  Nor  is  the  condescension  very 
great.  In  my  judgment  such  of  us  as  have  never  fallen 
victims,  have  been  spared  more  from  the  absence  of  ap 
petite,  than  from  any  mental  or  moral  superiority  over 
those  who  have.  Indeed,  I  believe,  if  we  take  habitual 
drunkards  as  a  class,  their  heads  and  their  hearts  will 
bear  an  advantageous  comparison  with  those  of  any  other 
class.  There  seems  ever  to  have  been  a  proneness  in 
the  brilliant,  and  warm-blooded,  to  fall  into  this  vice — 
the  demon  of  intemperance  ever  seems  to  have  delighted 
in  sucking  the  blood  of  genius  and  of  generosity.  What 
one  of  us  but  can  call  to  mind  some  relative,  more  prom 
ising  in  youth  than  all  his  fellows,  who  has  fallen  a  sac 
rifice  to  his  rapacity  ?  He  ever  seems  to  have  gone  forth 
like  the  Egyptian  angel  of  death,  commissioned  to  slay, 
if  not  the  first,  the  fairest  born  of  every  family.  Shall 
he  now  be  arrested  in  his  desolating  career?  In  that 
arrest,  all  can  give  aid  that  will;  and  who  shall  be  ex 
cused  that  can,  and  will  not?  Far  around  as  human 
breath  has  ever  blown,  he  keeps  our  fathers,  our  broth 
ers,  our  sons,  and  our  friends  prostrate  in  the  chains  of 
moral  death.  To  all  the  living  everywhere,  we  cry, 
"Come  sound  the  moral  trump,  that  these  may  rise  and 
stand  up  an  exceeding  great  army." — "Come  from  the 
four  winds,  O  breath!  and  breathe  upon  these  slain  that 
they  may  live."  If  the  relative  grandeur  of  revolutions 
shall  be  estimated  by  the  great  amount  of  human  misery 
they  alleviate,  and  the  small  amount  they  inflict,  then, 
indeed,  will  this  be  the  grandest  the  world  shall  ever 
have  seen. 

Of  our  political  revolution  of  '76  we  are  all  justly 
proud.  It  has  given  us  a  degree  of  political  freedom  far 
exceeding  that  of  any  other  nations  of  the  earth.  In  it 
the  world  has  found  a  solution  of  the  long  mooted  prob- 


150  APPENDIX 

lem,  as  to  the  capability  of  man  to  govern  himself.  In 
it  was  the  germ  which  has  vegetated,  and  still  is  to  grow 
and  expand  into  the  universal  liberty  of  mankind. 

But,  with  all  these  glorious  results,  past,  present,  and 
to  come,  it  had  its  evils,  too.  It  breathed  forth  famine, 
swam  in  blood,  and  rode  in  fire ;  and  long,  long  after,  the 
orphans'  cry  and  the  widows'  wail,  continued  to  break 
the  sad  silence  that  ensued.  These  were  the  price,  the 
inevitable  price,  paid  for  the  blessings  it  bought. 

Turn  now,  to  the  temperance  revolution.  In  it  we 
shall  find  a  stronger  bondage  broken,  a  viler  slavery 
manumitted,  a  greater  tyrant  deposed — in  it,  more  of 
want  supplied,  more  disease  healed,  more  sorrow  as 
suaged.  By  it,  no  orphans  starving,  no  widows  weeping. 
By  it,  none  wounded  in  feeling,  none  injured  in  interest; 
even  the  dram-maker  and  dram-seller  will  have  glided 
into  other  occupations  so  gradually  as  never  to  have  felt 
the  change,  and  will  stand  ready  to  join  all  others  in  the 
universal  song  of  gladness.  And  what  a  noble  ally  this, 
to  the  cause  of  political  freedom,  with  such  an  aid,  its 
march  cannot  fail  to  be  on  and  on,  till  every  son  of  earth 
shall  drink  in  rich  fruition  the  sorrow-quenching  draughts 
of  perfect  liberty.  Happy  day,  when  all  appetites  con 
trolled,  all  poisons  subdued,  all  matter  subjected;  mind, 
all  conquering  mind  shall  live  and  move,  the  monarch  of 
the  world.  Glorious  consummation !  Hail  fall  of  fury ! 
Reign  of  reason,  all  hail! 

And  when  the  victory  shall  be  complete — when  there 
shall  be  neither  a  slave  nor  a  drunkard  on  the  earth — 
how  proud  the  title  of  that  Land,  which  may  truly  claim 
to  be  the  birthplace  and  the  cradle  of  both  those  revolu 
tions,  that  shall  have  ended  in  that  victory.  How  nobly 
distinguished  that  people,  who  shall  have  planted  and  nur- 


APPENDIX  151 

tured  to  maturity,  both  the  political  and  moral  freedom 
of  their  species. 

This  is  the  one  hundred  and  tenth  anniversary  of  the 
birthday  of  Washington — we  are  met  to  celebrate  this 
day.  Washington  is  the  mightiest  name  of  earth — long 
since  mightiest  in  the  cause  of  civil  liberty,  still  mighti 
est  in  moral  reformation.  On  that  name  a  eulogy  is  ex 
pected.  It  cannot  be.  To  add  brightness  to  the  sun,  or 
glory  to  the  name  of  Washington  is  alike  impossible. 
Let  none  attempt  it.  In  solemn  awe  pronounce  the  name, 
and  in  its  naked  deathless  splendor  leave  it  shining  on.  - 


LIST  OF  BOOKS  QUOTED 

ARNOLD,  ISAAC  N.  "The  Life  of  Abraham  Lincoln." 
Chicago  :  McClurg  &  Co.,  1887. 

BACON,  LEONARD  WOOLSEY.  "A  History  of  American 
Christianity/'  Christian  Literature  Co.,  1897. 

BANKS,  REV.  Louis  ALBERT,  D.D.  "The  Lincoln 
Legion."  The  Mershan  Co.,  1903. 

BEECHER,  LYMAN.  "Autobiography  and  Correspond 
ence." 

BROOKS,  NOAH.  "Abraham  Lincoln."  Putnam  &  Sons, 
1896. 

BROWNE,  FRANCIS  F.  "The  Every-Day  Life  of  Abra 
ham  Lincoln."  Wm.  G.  Hills:  St.  Louis,  1896. 

BROWNE,  ROBERT  H.,  M.D.  "Abraham  Lincoln  and  the 
Men  of  His  Time."  Blakely-Oswald  Printing  Co., 
1907. 

BRYCE,  JAMES.  "The  American  Commonwealth."  The 
Macmillan  Company,  1891.  "Speeches  and  Letters  of 
Abraham  Lincoln."  Every  Man's  Library:  E.  P. 
Button  Company. 

CARPENTER,  F.  B.  "Six  Months  at  the  White  House 
with  Abraham  Lincoln."  Hurd  &  Houghton,  1867. 

CHARNWOOD,  LORD.  "Abraham  Lincoln."  Holt  &  Co., 
1917. 

CHESTERTON,  G.  K.  "Charles  Dickens,  A  Critical 
Study."  Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.,  1906. 


154  LIST  OF  BOOKS  QUOTED 

CHITTENDEN,  L.  E.  "Recollections  of  President  Lincoln 
and  His  Administration."  Harper  &  Bros.,  1904. 

COFFIN,  CHARLES  CARLETON.  "  Abraham  Lincoln." 
Harper  &  Bros.,  1893. 

CRAFTS,  DR.  AND  MRS.  W.  F.  "Intoxicating  Drinks  and 
Drugs  in  All  Lands  and  Times."  International  Re 
form  Bureau,  1911. 

CROOK,  COL.  WM.  H.  "Through  Five  Administrations." 
Harper  &  Bros.,  1910. 

CURTIS,  W.  E.  "Abraham  Lincoln."  J.  B.  Lippincott 
&  Co. 

CUYLER,  DR.  THEODORE  L.  "Temperance  in  All  Na 
tions." 

DICKENS,  CHARLES.  "American  Notes."  Nelson  and 
Sons. 

Dow,  NEAL.  "Reminiscences."  Express  Publishing 
Co. :  Portland,  Maine,  1898. 

GARLAND,  HAMLIN.  "General  Grant,  His  Life  and 
Character."  Doubleday  &  McClure  Co. 

GOUGH,  JOHN  B.  "Autobiography  of  John  B.  Gough." 
Bill,  Nicholy  Co.,  1870. 

GRIFFIS,  REV.  WM.  ELLIOT.  "John  Chambers."  An- 
drus  &  Church:  Ithaca,  1903. 

HERNDON.  "Abraham  Lincoln,  The  True  Story  of  a 
Great  Life,"  by  Wm.  H.  Herndon  and  Jesse  W.  Weik. 
D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  1896. 

HOLLAND,  J.  G.  "The  Life  of  Abraham  Lincoln."  Gur- 
don  Bill,  1866. 

HOWARD,  O.  O.  "Autobiography  of  General  O.  O. 
Howard." 

KOERNER.  "Life  Sketches  of  Gustave  Koerner."  Cedar 
Rapids,  1909. 

NEWTON,  JOSEPH  FORD.  "Lincoln  and  Herndon."  Ce 
dar  Rapids,  Iowa,  1910. 


LIST  OF  BOOKS  QUOTED  155 

NICOLAY  AND  HAY.  "Abraham  Lincoln — A  History,"  by 
John  G.  Nicolay  and  John  Hay.  Century  Co.,  1890. 

RANKIN,  HENRY  B.  "Personal  Recollections  of  Abra 
ham  Lincoln."  Putnam,  1916. 

RHODES,  JAMES  FORD.     "History  of  the  Civil  War." 

RICE,  ALLEN  THORNDIKE.  "Reminiscences  of  Abraham 
Lincoln  by  Distinguished  Men  of  His  Time."  Harper 
&  Bros.,  1909. 

ROTHSCHILD,  ALONZO.  "Lincoln — Master  of  Men." 
Houghton  Mifflin  &  Co.,  1906. 

"Honest  Abe."     Houghton  Mifflin  &  Co.,  1917. 

SCHURZ,  CARL.  "The  Reminiscences  of  Carl  Schurz." 
The  McClure  Co.,  1907. 

STODDARD.  "Abraham  Lincoln — The  True  Story  of  a 
Great  Life,"  by  Wm.  O.  Stoddard,  One  of  President 
Lincoln's  Private  Secretaries.  Fords,  Howard  &  Hul- 
bert :  New  York,  1896. 

TARBELL,  IDA  M.  "The  Life  of  Abraham  Lincoln." 
Doubleday,  McClure  Co. :  New  York,  1900. 

THOMPSON,    ROBERT    ELLIS.     "The    Hand    of    God    in 
American  History."    Crowell  &  Co. :  New  York,  1902. 
"Temperance  in  All   Nations."     National   Temper 
ance  Society,  1893. 

WELLS.  "Diary  of  Gideon  T.  Wells,"  Secretary  of  the 
Navy.  Houghton  Mifflin  &  Co. 

WHITNEY,  HENRY  C.     "Life  of  Lincoln." 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


RE 

APR    3 


r*\ 


LD  21-100m-ll,'49(B7146sl6)476 


VB  2013! 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


